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MAN PRIMEVAL: 



OB, 



THE CONSTITUTION AND PRIMITIVE CONDITION 
OF THE HUMAN BEING. 



A CONTRIB 

TO 

T H E L G I Cr'A t'- 




BY 



JOHN HARRIS, D. D 

PRMIDIINT OP CHESHONT COIXEGE, 

AUTHOE OF "the GREAT TEACHEE," "THE GEEAT COMMISSION," " MAHMON, 

"the pee- ADAMITE EARTH," ETC. 



SBCOKD THOUSAND. 



BOSTON: 
GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, 

59 WASHINGTON STBEET. 
1850. 









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V7 \9^6 



andoveb: 
J. J>. FLAGG AND W. H. WARDWBLL, 

Br£BEeTTPKB8 AKD PBCNTEB8. 




PREFACE 



In the Preface to the " Pre- Adamite Earth," I stated that 
*he principles or laws there adduced, and applied to the succes- 
sive stages of the ancient earth, would be exhibited in their his- 
torical development, in a short series of treatises (each treatise 
complete in itself) in relation to individual man, to the family,, 
to the nation, to the Son of God, to the church which he has 
founded, to the revelation which he has completed, and to the 
future prospects of humanity. Accordingly, the principles 
which were there seen holding their way through the successive 
kingdoms of primaeval nature, are here resumed, and are exhibited 
in their next and higher application to individual man. 

On the day of man's creation it was, that law first subjectively 
reigned on earth. Prior to that event, the so-called laws of 
nature were mere modes of Divine operation, known only to 
the mind of the Creator. But a being had now come who 
could consciously stand face to face with them, could conceive 
of them, employ them, and ascend ia homage from them to the 



IV PREFACE. 

Divine Lawgiver. In him, all these pre-existing laws were re- 
capitulated, and others were superadded. He himself was a 
system of moral government. Not only was the grand process 
of the Divine disclosure to be continued in man and by him, 
but he was so constituted that to him the entire manifestation 
was to be made. The laws of the Divine procedure, therefore, 
are here distributed into three Parts, consisting of the end 
aimed at ; the method of attaining it ; and the reasons for the 
employment of that method. 

The grounds for the adoption of this three-fold arrangement 
may be more explicitly stated thus : — reverentially assuming, 
first, that every step of the Divine procedure is related and 
tending to an ultimate end ; it may be inferred, secondly, that 
" the only wise God " who " seeth the end from the beginning," 
pursues that end, not improvidently and uncertainly, but accord- 
ing to an all-comprehending method; and, thirdly, that the 
method chosen involves special reasons why it has been pre- 
ferred. For unless we can suppose the Divine Being to be 
coerced by a necessity superior to himself, or to be bound by 
the iron mechanism of fate, we must infer that He has intelli- 
gently devised, and voluntarily adopted, the entire plan of his 
procedure ; and if so, it follows that He has done so for reasons, 
or " according to the counsel of his own will." These three 
parts, though inseparably united, are essentially distinct. 

An illustration of this view may be taken from Scripture ; — 
«the heavens declare the glory of God." Here, first, the end 
Ihey answer is plainly affirmed ; they declare the glory of their 
Creator. But, secondly, what is the method by which this end 
is attained ? Doubtless, ever since there has been an intelligent 
eyfe to behold them, the mere splendor, numbers, and magni- 



PREPAOE. V 

tudes of the heavenly bodies, have been incessantly awakening 
convictions in the human mind of the " eternal power and God- 
head." Beyond this, however, astronomy enables us to measure 
those vast masses, to calculate their distances, and to determine 
their motions. It shows that the celestial mechanism is con- 
structed according to a scientifically calculated method, which is 
always unfolding to the observant eye ; and that, being perva- 
ded by laws, it is ever pointing to the Lawgiver. But why 
thirdly, the adoption of the special method, or particular laws, 
which we find in actual operation ? They cannot be shown to 
be necessary. No doubt, laws and properties of some kind, 
matter must have. But, for aught which can be shown to thie 
contrary, the nature or form of the laws existing might have 
been variously modified. They exhibit signs of having been 
selected and instituted. What, then, if the laws of the celestial 
mechanism had been either indefinitely more simple and acces- 
sible, or more complicated and recondite, than they are ? Who 
does not see that, on the former hypothesis, they would have 
been comparatively valueless as a means of man's intellectual 
development, and that, on the latter, he must have remained in 
ignorance of all the proofs which they now exhibit of original ad- 
justment by a designing Mind ? If, however, the earth is to be 
the scene of man's mental and religious education, the existing 
constitution of the heavens is admirably adapted to furnish him 
alike with a portion of his science and of a well-reasoned natu- 
ral theology. And in this Divine adjustment of the laws of 
mind and matter, a true philosophy will recognize, at least, one 
reason for the actual method or mechanism of the heavens. 

Though only a subordinate matter, it may not be out of place 
to state my reasons for the space accorded, in the first Part, to 

A* 



VI PREFACE. 

the consideration of the human constitution and of natural laws. 
While the present volume advances only, in man's historical 
career, to that opening stage when first he awoke to a conscious- 
ness of guilt, his constitution is for all duration. All his sub- 
sequent history is only its externalization and exponent. Its 
permanence alone, therefore, might justify our prolonged con- 
sideration of it. But the study of it is also essential to the 
intelligent appreciation of much of that Divine revelation which 
presupposes and appeals to it ; as well as prepares the way for 
more effectually dealing with many of the supposed difficulties 
of revelation, or of showing that revelation has been unjustly 
burdened with them, since they belong properly to the more 
ancient department of human nature. Revelation only assumes 
them as facts already and independently existing ; but it is no 
more answerable for them than the old religion of Egypt was, 
because it built its temples and monuments on the banks of the 
Nile, for the mystery in which the fountains of that river are 
hid ; or than the Moral Law is responsible for the unsolved 
problems of geology and meteorology, because the Divine Law- 
giver appropriately uttered his voice from among the granite 
crags of Sinai, and aggravated the appalling splendors of the 
scene by piling the mountain with dark thunder-clouds. True ; 
the God-made man, and the God-inspired word, are two parts 
of one whole — two compartments of one temple — but he who 
reserves all his difficulties and questionings for the inner, shows 
that he has passed through the outer court blindfold. 

Respecting natural laws, also, I have been, incidentally, more 
specific and urgent than might have been deemed necessary, 
were it not for the conviction that the subject has not received 
that distinct recognition in much of our modern religious literar 



PREFACE. VU 

ture, which its fundamental importance requires. Reasons ex- 
planatory, and, to a certain extent, exculpatory, of this compar- 
ative neglect might, if necessary, be easily assigned ; such, for 
example, as the idea of thereby magnifying, by implication, the 
claims of God's providential administration, and of rendering 
additional homage to it. But one of the evil consequences has 
been, that some parties have been led to pursue the opposite 
extreme ; and that, by simply recalling "attention to the course 
and constitution of nature, they have come to be regarded by 
many almost in the light of grand discoverers — as peculiar 
benefactors of their species — as possessed of a kind of know- 
ledge more immediately useful than any religious teaching — 
and as being justified in silently omitting all mention of the doc- 
trine of an ever-active Providence, or even in indirectly pro- 
testing against it. The erroneous supposition appears to be, 
that Nature and Providence are two hostile claimants ; and that 
whatever importance is ceded to the one is so much homage 
taken from the other. The truth being, however, that the for- 
mer is properly opposed only to chance or an unreasoning 
caprice, and the latter to a blind necessity. Nature is the pri- 
mary utterance of Providence — its first proclamation respects 
ing the laws according to which it proposes to govern. But 
that it is neither restricted to any given natural laws, nor ulti- 
mately dependent on them, is evident from the fact that the his- 
tory of creation is a history of changes and additions unknown 
to all the previous course of nature ; man himself being one 
of the latest, the crowning addition. 

These topics, however, are only incidental to the main sub- 
ject. As to the filling up of my outline in the following pages, 
with what may be called the Proem of man's eventful history, 



Vm PREFACE. 

I leave it to speak for itself; with no solicitude whatever re- 
specting the truth and importance of the principles involved, 
but with much relative to the manner in which I have ex- 
pounded them. 



CONTENT 




FIRST PART. 
THE DIVINE METHOD. 

CHAPTER I — HOLINESS. 

1, The ancient earth prepared for man. 2, Geological changes, whi^ 
preceded his creation, more remarkable than those which attended it. 
3, Other intelligences already existed elsewhere. 4, But man's creation 
of profound interest. 5, The first Law. 6, The ancient earth the scene 
of Divine power. 7, Of Wisdom. 8, Of Goodness, awakening the expec- 
tation of another disclosure. 9, Moral Groremment ; Holiness, Justice. 

10, Will the different parts of this stage be separated by long intervals ? 

11, Holiness already displayed elsewhere. 12, Will man be the occasion 
of a new disclosure ? 13, He may be expected first to epitomise and 
exhibit the preceding displays. 14, Man's constitution. 15, The image 
of God I 

CHAPTER n. — THE PAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 

1, The second law 2, New source of information, the Bible. 3, Char- 
acter of the narrative. 4, Anthropopathic. 5, Optical. 6, Specifically 
relates to man. 7, Is m analogy with disciplinary character of general 
Divine arrangements. 8, Law illustrated : pre-existing matter employed. 
9, Time of its origination indefinitely remote. 10, Probable extent of the 
Mosaic chaos and creation. 11, The Edenic region and garden. 12, State 
of chaos. 13, The six days' work. 14, The conditions of this law further 
satisfied. 15, In the creation of man. 16, Antecedently improbable that 
man would be closely allied to preceding nature. 17, Yet he is material. 
18, Organic. 19, Animal. 20, First, as to nutrition. 21, Secondly, the 
propagation of the species. 22, The creation of woman. 23, The unity 
of the species. 24, How implied in Gen. i. ii. 25, Difficulties to be 
expected, but diminishing. 26, Inferred from anatomy. 27, Physiology; 
28, Psychology. 29, History and physical geography. 30, Comparative 
philology. 32, Analogy. 33, Objection from chronology answered. 34, 
Plurality of species involves greater difliculties. 35, The different branches 
of evidence unite. 36, Thirdly, Instincts. 37, Nature and man recipro- 
cally related. 38, Man's " foundation in the dust." 39, The probable 
relation of the angelic to the human economy .... 10 

CHAPTER HL — PROGRESSION. 
Section L — Sensation and Perception. 

1, The third law. 2, Reasons for it. 3, Man, the being to whom the 
Divine manifestation is to be made. 4, The Creating and the created 



X CONTENTS. 

minds must have certain things in common. 5, General proposition ; man 
must be placed in sensible communication with nature. 6, Certain condi- 
tions of sensational perception. 7, That the perception be of phenomena 

— secondary qualities — primary qualities. 9, That the intellect appre- 
hend the object as it is — probable ground of the distinction between pri- 
mary and secondary quahties, in relation to man. 11, That perception 
be immediate — representationalism and its source — leads to idealism — 
knowledge of objects direct. 15, That these conditions be uniform and 
constant. 16, Subjective conditions presupposed. 17, First sensational 
perceptions of the first man 34 

Section II. — Understanding and Reflection. 

1, General proposition. 2, Man must have the power of observing 
relations. 3, Where do they exist ? 4, Laws of the mind in thinking ? 
Difference between Locke and Kant. 5, Examples ; every body in space, 
motion in time. 6, Every phenomenon has a cause. 7, Every attribute 
implies a substance. 8, Secondary qualities imply externality. 9, Ex- 
ternal phenomena sustain relations of resemblance. 10, Means and ends, 
or final clauses. 11, Logic. 12, Induction. 13, Art. 14. Here is a second 
means of knowledge. 15, Coincidence of the objective and the sub- 
jective 43 

Section III. — Reason, speculative and realized. 

1, General proposition ; man must have rational beliefs, which account 
for these relations. 2, Characteristics of such beliefs. 6, How do they 
arise ? 7, Order of their development — distinctions between reason spe- 
culative and practical. 12, The form of the products of reason, as Beliefs 

— different opinions respecting our views of the Infinite. 1 6, Number of 
original beliefs — must include whatever truths were presupposed in 
creation. 19, Validity of such behefs — authority of consciousness ulti- 
mate — for the spiritual as well as for the material. 25, Provision for the 
reception of Divine revelations. 26, Ground for expecting such a mental 
constitution. 27, The mind transcends nature. 28, Antecedents, logical 
and chronological. 29, The arguments a priori and k posteriori. 30, Ne- 
cessary and contingent truth. 31, Synthesis and analysis. 32, Co-exist- 
tence and successive existence. 33, Deduction. 34, Induction. 36, Nature 
and man proceed inversely. 40, Necessary truth brings the mind nearer 
to God. 41, Science becomes deductive. 42, Sense, reflection, reason, 
coincide with nature, man, God. 43, God descends in nature, man 
ascends 54 

Section IV. — Imagination. 

1, General proposition. 2, The actual not the measure of the possible. 
3, Imagination, how allied to the preceding faculties. 4, Distinguishable 
from them. 5, Works of, anticipate criticism. 6, Distinct from fancy. 
7, Relates to that which might be. 8, Its sphere, the moral as well as the 
intellectual 81 

Section V. — Man Emotional. 

1, Necessity for emotional susceptibility. 2, Proposition. 3, Emotion, 
what, as compared with appetites, sensation, &c. — distribution of emotion 



CONTEKTS. XI 

— approprlative. ll,Impartative. 1 8, Arrestive. 19, Perfective — beauty 
and sublimity. 20, Remedial. 21, Relational ; further generalization. 22, 
Their relation to the great scheme. 23, Co*extensive with means of 
knowledge. 24, Important to cultivate them. 25, So as to be moved by 
objects in proportion to their importance. 26, Forming a scale of valua 
tion. 27, Laws of the emotions 85 

Section VI. — Man Voluntary. 

1, Viewed hitherto as passive. 2, A will necessaiy. 3, General propo- 
sition. 6, Motives conditionally resistible. 10, Force of motives differing 
from physical causation. 11, The will itself a conditioned cause. 14, 
Conscious non-restraint in volition — freedom an ultimate fact — motives, 
not objective powers — character and motive re-act — idea of a cause 
first given by the -will. 21, But volitions necessarily conditioned by 
motives — each theory errs by exclusiveness — liberty of indifference ab- 
surd. 25, Can a particular will co-exist with a universal law ? Law and 
liberty co-exist in God, and, therefore, manifested in man, and analogous 
with it — Divine and human agency compatible — coincidence of the 
human will with the Divine essential to freedoni. 30, Can man's freedom 
co-exist with the laws of material nature ? This makes self-dedication 
possible. 32, Power of the will ; can call for various motives. 33, These 
suggest others. 34, From which it can select — attention. 35, Attention 
increases the motive power of an object — hence Belief not involuntary 

— in what sense necessary to aid understanding. 37, Prevents distraction 
from other objects. 39, Voluntary acts become easier by repetition — 
habit. 42, Muscular system given to serve the will. 44, The individual 
will can unite with other wills. 45, A number co-operating for good, sub- 
lime. 46, Even one will united with the Divine. 47, The Bible assumes 
all the laws of the will 100 

Section VII. — Conscience. 

1, An intelligent will, a new power on earth. 3, A reflection of the 
Divine will. 4, Constitutes man a person, 5, But not the only element 
of responsibility — general proposition. 7, Twofold distribution of moral 
science. 8, How does man derive the notion of virtue ? 9, He univer- 
sally recognizes a moral quality in actions. 13, Not from human law. 
14, Nor from Divine appointment. 15, Nor from his own constitution. 
17, Nor as the result of intellectual intuition. 18, Judgment. 19, Asso- 
ciation. 22, Nor a calculation of consequences — Hobbes — Hume — 
Paley — Dwight. 25. Several reasons why not. 34, Conscience a dis- 
tinct faculty. 36, Its function. 37, Threefold. 40, Its relation to the 
different classes of the motives 41, To the will. 42, Universal in rela- 
tion to the movements of the mind. 43, Unintermitting. 44, Supreme. 
46, Influence without compulsion. 47, Its perversion within limits. 131 

Section VLU. — Language and Testimony. 

1, A second mind a means of knowledge. 2, Conditions of this know- 
ledge. 3, First, language, what — sounds — articulate — signs of thought 
— harmonizing with laAvs of thought — mental agreement — verbal agree- 
ment — fixed. 10, Secondly, the credibility of testimony must be ascer- 
tainable. 11, Conditions. 17, The mind constituted to believe such. 18, 



401 CONTENTS. 

What the origin of language. 19, Three opinions. 22, The original 
unity of language. 23, The primitive language. 24, Erroneous notions 
respecting the new-made man 156 

Section IX. — MarCs Primitive Condition. 

1, His selected abode. 2, Well-being provided for. 3, A Divine in- 
structor. 4, Opinions on this subject. 5, A second human being. 6, The 
institution of the sabbath. 7, The enactment of a special law. 8, Dis- 
closing that God is the Creator. 9, The existence of moral government. 
10, The immortality of the soul. 11, Reasons for its immortality, objec- 
tive. 12, Subjective. 13. Judicial. 14, The death threatened. 15, Bodily 
dissolution falls short of it. 16, Had man not fallen, the universe of 
worlds was open to him. 17, God had now a son upon earth . 166 

CHAPTER IV. — CONTINUITY. 

1, Serial character of the Adamic creation. 3, Man in chronological 
continuity — recency of his origin. 4, Geological continuity. 5, Physio- 
logical •— limits of this idea. 6, Part of the great system . . 180 

CHAPTER v. — DEVELOPMENT. 

1, Law of development. 2, Superiority of man's physical structure. 
6, The social principle. 8, Perfection of man'js perceptions exceeds the 
comparative perfection of his organs. 9, Relative proportion of brain in 
the vertebrata. 10, Embryotic and transmutation hypotheses unfounded. 
12, Phrenology, 15, Distinctions between mind and matter. 24, Mind 
of animals — instinct. 28, Human mind differs in kind and degree. 30, 
Man's end agrees with his constitution. 31, Develops nature, and raises 
its relations 185 

CHAPTER VL — ACTIVITY. 

1, Law of activity. 2, Movements involuntary — voluntary. 4, Made 
necessary by man's constitution. 5, And by that of the world around him. 
6, Volition 'incessant. 7, Activity a condition of development — with the 
first man — and in heaven 208 

CHAPTER Vn. — RELATIONS. 

1, Law of relation. 2, Relations internal and co-existent. 4, Succes- 
sively existent. 5, External and co-existent — physical — sentient — re- 
flective — rational — mind to mind — imaginative — emotional — volun- 
tary — moral — verbal — to God. 19, Successively existent. 20, To 
God. 21, Man's relations complicated, continuous, ever-increasing, uni- 
versal 212 

CHAPTER VIII.— ORDER. 

1, Law of order. 2, Illustrated physiologically. 4, By the succession 
in which the phenomena of intelligence are developed. 5, Knowledge is 
sought. 6, Principles of action appear. 7, Religion. 8, Order of the 
Adamic creation 226 



CONTENTS. XUl 



CHAPTER IX —INFLUENCE. 

1, Law of influence. 2, In pre-existing nature, 3, In man, a self- 
knowing and self-governing power. 5, Capable of constant increase. 6, 
Imprints himself on nature, and subordinates it. 7, Influence on his 
fellow-man. 8, With God. 9, And is himself influenced . . 230 

CHAPTER X. — SUBORDINATION. 

1, Law of subordination. 2, Man's nature a constitution. 3, Motives, 
their graduated rank. 7, Corresponding rank of their external objects. 
9, Supremacy of that which points to the Divine will. 1 0, Influence of 
ideas superior to that of brute force. 1 1, Moral ideas supreme. 12, Man's 
influence on others determined by his moving principle. 13, The loftiness 
of his aim. 14, The entireness of his pursuit. 15, Ranks according to his 
influence. 16, Law of influence, one of improvement . . . 235 

CHAPTER XL — OBLIGATION. 

1, Law of obligation. 2, Every part of man's nature under obligation 
— physical — sentient — reflective, &c. 11, Obligation progressive. 12, 
What he might have been, determines obligation. 13, His obligations to 
the objective universe. 14, As he is sentient — reflective, &c. 20, To 
obey God, supreme. 21, From the constitution of things. 22, And, as 
such, suited to our nature. 23. Obligation continuous. 24, Increasing. 
25, Varying. 26, Universal. 27, If violated, by him remediless. 28, De- 
pendence and duty of primitive man. 29, Ground of obligation . 243 

CHAPTER XIL — UNIFORMITY OF GENERAL LAWS. 

1, Obligation presupposes Law. 2, Conformity to law of pre-existing 
nature. 3, Uniformity conditional. 4, Wrong distinct from guilt. 6, 
Consequences of guilt. 7, How man may know the natural laws under 
which he is placed. 8, And his moral obligation. 9, How far these laws 
suffice — defects of natural religion. 10, Ignorance and depravity do not 
absolve from law. 12, Nature an instrument of moral government. 13, 
Not exclusive of providential superintendence .. , , . 258 

CHAPTER XIIL — WELL-BEING. 

1, Law of well-being. 2, Internal conditions of, co-existent. 3, Succes- 
sively existent. 4, Viewing man as progressive — habit. 5, From habit 
results character. 6, Objective conditions of well-being. 9, Man the 
subject of moral government — pain. 11, The system only partially devel- 
oped here — punishment inheres. 13, Natural religion — its office — 
insufficiency. 16, The kind of revelation necessary. 17, Character, ulti- 
mately a self-formation. 18, Primal prohibition meant to teach this. 19, 
Man's yearning after ideal perfection. 20, His departure from it admits 
of infinite diversity 267 

CHAPTER XIV. — CONTINGENCE OR DEPENDENCE. 

^ 1, System to which man belongs dependent. 2, The time of his Crea- 
don. 3, His earliest locality — his constitution — that of the planet he 



/ 



XiV CONTENTS. 

inhabits — and his knowledge. 8, With a view to his freedom. 9, His 
immortality, a gift. 10, Paradisiacal arrangements. 11, Danger of sup- 
posing himself independent — provided against. 13, Man, subjectively 
dependent — three theories. 14, Divine sustentation differs Avith the dif- 
ferent parts of man. 15, The whole an illustration of Divine Sove- 
reignty . . . . • 285 

CHAPTER XV. — ULTIMATE FACTS. 

1, Ultimate facts, what ? 2, Law, what ? 3, Not equivalent to cause — 
explains nothing. 4, Three modes of treating on ultimate facts of nature 
— as inherent causes — laws — effects of a Divine Agent. 7, Nature, an 
ultimate fact — life — sensation — instinct — mind. 1 2, Ground of belief 
in external existence, ultimate — the cause of man's existence — charac- 
ter — power of prayer — idea of a moral quality in actions — of immor- 
tality — and of moral evil. 19, Every part of man's constitution points 
to an ultimate fact 295 



CHAPTER XVI. — NECESSARY TRUTH. 

1 , Relation of ultimate facts to necessary truth. 2, Necessary truth 
distinguished — implied — characterized — instances of. 6, Ideas of free- 
dom — right — perfection — law, &c. 10, As conscious of it, man com- 
munes with the Infinite mind 309 



CHAPTER XVn.— ANALOGY. 

1, General proposition. 2, Firsts man, constructed on a plan. 3, His 
intellect related to the great system. 4, His emotions classify their 
objects. 5, His moral nature finds its proper objects without. 6, His well- 
being proportioned to the harmony of his constitution and condition. 7, 
Original perfection of the adjustment. 8, Secondly, the human dispensa- 
tion introduced like others. 9, When the earth Avas suited to man. 10, 
Without deranging nature. 11, Moral government only an advance — 
probation. 12, Continuity of existence, not without analogies. 14, So, 
also, probation. 15, Possibility of failure. 16, Direct revelation no objec- 
tion. 17, Difficulties analogous. 1 8, J^iVc?/^, universal classification, prin- 
ciples of — order — illustration — characteristics. 22, Places man at the 
head of creation. 23, Gives every man " his own place." 24, On what 
grounds. 25, The final classification 314 



CHAPTER XVm. — CHANGE. 

1, Will man fall? 2, Will his probationary stage be succeeded by 
another ? 3, The law of change — illustrated. 5, In relation to proba- 
tionary man. 6, Probationary conditions fulfilled — man free — and de- 
pendent — means of verifying both. 9, His first sin. 10, Made sensible 
of his dependence. 11, But is his holiness adequately illustrated ? 12, 
Adequately for whom"? 14, Conditions of change. 15, The first inap- 
plicable, ie, The second fulfilled — God himself satisfied. 18, The third 
fclfilled 337 



CONTENTS. ^^ 

SECOND PART. 
THE REASON OF THE METHOD. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Section I. — The reason which belongs to marl's constitution.^ and involves 
his well-being. 
1, Stated. 2, Method in creation essential. 3, That the objective con- 
ditions of science might exist. 4, The subjective. 5, That philosophy 
and natural theology might be possible. 6, And man's development and 
probation. 7, His physical adjustment, and its "liabilities. 8, Sensation, 
and its liabilities. 9, His power of belief on evidence, of reason, imagi- 
nation, speech, gesture, emotion, and their respective dangers. 15, His 
motives, in whicli the material and the spiritual are balanced — the present 
and future — one and many — the limited and the unlimited. 19, Dangers 
of the undue development of the intellect — the emotions — the different 
classes of motives. 22, Men distributable into two classes — one seeking 
to enlarge their freedom, the other to reduce it. 24, Every period of life 
on probation — why — nothing man's except by experience — conditions 
of it — why arc his powers only thus ascertainable. 29, Conditions of the 
trial — advantages of it — folly of pushing the inquiry further . 351 

Section II. — The reason which i-elates to the Divine all-sufficiency, and 
includes man's destiny. 
1, All possible creations not desirable — the possible development of 
man makes it unnecessary. 5, Every individual, community, period, and 
branch of the human family different. 10, Different worlds. 11, Each 
family, nation, age, and world, treated distinctly, and apart, yet, as a whole. 
1 6, Reasons, physical, moral, and Divine. 1 7, The spiritual creation has a 
universal law as well as the material. 19, Universe ever receiving acces- 
sions. 20, Probable limit to this view. 21, Some of the conditions of a 
Revelation. 22, Man's wants multiplied indefinitely by the diversity of 
character which sin makes possible. 23, And by the perversion of every 
remedial interposition. 24, He may have to exhaust these possibilities. 
25, This not necessary. 26, Divine resources illustrated by every new 
complication. 27, Their inconceivableness. 28, While on probation, 
each world probablv has to confine itself chiefly to its own special history. 

373 

Section IH. — The tivo-fold reason in its application to the first man. 

1, He takes his place in the great system. 2, Present existence of 
sin assumed. 3, The first law — a test oif character still. 5, Implied the 
harmony of man's constitution with itself and with the universe. . 8, The 
arrangement combined the minimum of liability Avith the maximum of 
advantage. 9, Reasonableness of the law — three-fold adaptation. 11, 
The temptation of a counterbalance. 12, The particular test selected. 
14, Personal consequences of the Fall. 15, The outward act indicative 
of a state of mind. 16, How sin began — how it depraves. 18. Deprava- 
tion — guilt — changed condition — special provision withdrawn — ex- 
emption from dissolution repealed. 23, Nothing arbitrary. 24, Effect on 



XVI CONTENTS. 

posterity. 27, Breach of moral, worse than of material law. 28, Princi 
pie of the probationary law universal. 29, Was evil foreseen 1 — could it 
have been pi-evented ? — power and danger of sinning, distinct. 32, Evil, 
subordinated to good — and to a further proof of the Divine resources. 
34, God's subjective hatred to sin. 35, The great Lesson of man's trial — 
still pursued, as a leading principle of Divine procedure . . 392 



THIRD PART. 
THE ULTIMATE END. 

CHAPTER XX. 

Section L — Power. 

1, Proofs of, brought forward — ever increasing. 3, Man himself a 
power — enabling him to apprehend the power of the Creator — and to 
reason from a limited cause to the unlimited, 6, His influence over mind 
gives him the profoundest conception of power . . . 419 

Section II. — Wisdom. 
1, Proofs of, brought forward. 2, New evidences of, in man's means of 
knowledge — power of classification — emotions — will and conscience. 
6, In his internal relations — successively existent. 8, Various illustrations 
of design. 9, Estimated numerically. 10, Tests of. 11, The first man 
exhibited all these illustrations of. 12, Man finds his wisdom in searching- 
after God's 422 

Section HI. — Goodness. 
1, Past proofs of, repeated in man, and exceeded. 2, A constitution 
for enjoyment — ever-increasing. 4, His primitive condition corresponded 

— activity without toil — a help-meet — a sabbath — progressive develop- 
ment consulted — Divine instruction — exemption from death. 10, Pro- 
bation, benevolent — its result made the occasion of good. 12, As mere 
proof of, all this in excess — prospectively, greater still . . 428 

Section IV. — Holiness. 
1, Already proved, by another race. 2, In addition, man orgnnized for 
virtue. 3, His instincts subservient to it — his reason — hims'' ? a self- 
judicature — virtue made pleasurable — and progressive. 8, External 
arrangements correspond — physical — instinctive — social — sympathetic 

— infantine — tasteful — useful. 1 7, His mind an image of the Divine — 
subject to limits. 19, His probation illustrative of Divine holiness— -and 
his failure — and its results. 22, Angelic conceptions of that holiness. 
23, Possible conjunction of the two economies — conjecture falls short of 
reality. 25, Man may well wait for results. His first crisis . 436 

NOTE 453 

INDEX 460 




FIRST PART. 
THE DIVINE METHOD 



CHAPTER I. 



HOLINESS. 



1. ]\Ian was not made for the earth; the earth, from the 
first, had been preparing for man, and we are to suppose that 
now, at length, the hour of his creation had arrived. Often, we 
believe, since the material of the earth was at first called into 
existence, had vast spaces on its surface become " formless and 
waste," and " darkness " had hung " on the face of the deep." 
And as often had the creative will recalled it from chaos, and 
restored it to order and beauty. But even each of these suc- 
cessive wrecks of the earth had looked on beyond itself, and 
had a respect to the coming of man ; and each of the new 
creations which followed had formed part of a system of means 
of which he was to be the subordinate end. For him, volcanic 
fires had fused and crystalhzed the granite, and piled it up into 
lofty table-lands. The never-wearied water had, for him, worn 
and washed it down into extensive valleys and plains of vege- 
table soil. For him, the earth had often vibrated with electrical 
shocks, and had become interlaced with rich metallic veins. 
Ages of comparative quiet had followed each great revolution 
of nature, during some of which the long-accumulating vege- 
tables of preceding periods were, for him, transmuted into 
stores of fuel ; the ferruginous deposits of primeval waters were 
becoming iron ; and successive races of destroyed animals were 
changed into masses of useful limestone. The interior of the 



25 MAX. 

earth had become a store-honse, in which everything necessary 
was laid up for his use, in order that, when the time should 
come for him to open and gaze on its treasures — on "the 
blessings of the deep that lieth under,"* — on "the chief 
things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things of the 
lasting hills,"! ^^e might gratefully recognize the benevolent 
foresight of the Being wdio had prepared, selected, and placed 
them there. Many of those great facts which we are accustomed 
to regard as alone constituting the " laws of nature," because the 
uniformity of their operation extends through ages of duration, 
had repeatedly given place for a time, and had owned their sub- 
jection to a principle more comprehensive still — the principle 
that, not the uniformity of ten thousand years, but the change 
which then breaks up that uniformity, is the grand controlling 
principle of the universe, — itself, perhaps, of uniform recur- 
rence. And, for him, many of these successive changes of the 
earth had been commemorated by geological monuments, which, 
when uncovered and deciphered, should convince him that all 
its revolutions had been conducted under the superintending 
eye of Infinite Wisdom. All this may be said to have taken 
place for him ; not, indeed, exclusively and supremely, but in 
the sense that, as every end to be answered by creation must 
be supposed to be included in the Divine purpose, and as the 
coming of man was calculated to answer the highest end at 
that time attained, every preceding end may be regarded as a 
means in order to its attainment. 

2. The appearance of man on the terrestrial stage, therefore, 
is to be regarded as the great event of the Adamic creation. 
Geologically speaking, more remarkable physical changes and 
organic creations had signalized preceding epochs. The out- 
burst of vegetable life in the carboniferous series, and the ani- 
mal forms of the mammaliferous period, attest creative interpo- 
sitions on a larger scale than any of the same kind which have 
distinguished subsequent epochs. 

3. And there is ground to believe also, that while the earth, 
as the scene of inorganic change, of organic life, and of animal 
existence, had, for unknown ages, exhibited successive displays 
of power, and wisdom, and goodness, other parts of the universe 
were not unvisited by subhme disclosures of Divine Perfection- 
Reasoning from analogy, philosophy assumes the probability 
that the heavenly bodies are not adl uninhabited. From the 

* Gen. xlix. 25. t Deut. xxxiii. 15. 



HOLINESS. 3 

opening pages of Revelation we are led to infer that, prior to 
the creation of man, an order of intelligent beings had been 
called into existence, v/hose generic name, as known to us, is 
" angels " — a name descriptive, not of nature, but of office. 
And the nature of their connection with the system to which 
man belongs will hereafter form the subject of our considera- 
tion. For the present, we have to regard his creation as the 
introduction of a new stage of the Divme procedure — as the 
completion and crown of all the preceding stages of the terres- 
trial economy. 

4. Let us imagine, as an analogous case, that one of the 
planets on which, in the stillness of evening, our eye has often 
rested, and which for untold ages has been pursuing its silent 
course thi'ough the heavens, were about to become, for the first 
time, the habitation — not of existence from other worlds — but 
of a new race of inteUigent beings ; creatures of a kind hitherto 
unknown to the universe of God ; that they are to go on mul- 
tiplying for ages ; that, as their history advances, it is to be 
marked by unprecedented events ; to be the means of devel- 
oping new principles of the Divine government, new aspects 
of the Divine character; and that the first of the race about to 
be created, is to sustain, in some way, a relation to all that shall 
follow, which shall shed a peculiar influence on the whole, 
thi'ough all duration. The knowledge of such an event impend- 
ing there, would be calculated to draw to it the interest, and to 
rivet on it the attention of the universe. Yet such was the pro- 
found interest — however unexciting the subject may have 
become to us through familiarity — which attached to the intro- 
duction of the first man upon the earth. 

5. In proceeding to expound the sources of this interest, we 
propose to take up the laws of the Divine Manifestation in the 
same order as that in wdiich they were illustrated in the trea- 
tise on "The Pre-Adamite Earth," and we therefore begin 
with the great principle that " every divinely originated object 
and event is a result, the supreme and ultimate reason of which 
is in the Divine nature." 

6. In our first imaginary visit to the ancient eai'th, we beheld, 
in the origination of matter and its planetary formation, an 
expression of Povr^er. The bare existence of the new dependent 
substance presupposed the existence of the independent and 
infinite Substance. The laws which the planetary motions 
exhibited were His laws, and proclaimed Him to be " the God 
of order." The first objective eflf^ct — the creation of matter — 



4 MAN. 

irresistibly awoke the conviction of the First Cause ; it was the 
solemn utterance of the Deity on causation. We beheld the 
universe of matter in motion : it was the great practical lesson 
of the Deity on dynamics — the doctrine of force producing 
motion. Every idea which can be supposed to have been then 
truly suggested and represented, expressed a spiritual corres- 
pondence, infinitely greater, in the Divine Creator. But that 
which the whole — every property of matter, every process by 
which its properties were developed, every law which regulated 
these processes, every elementary particle, and every revolving 
planet — combined pre-eminently to indicate, was, the all-suffi- 
ciency of the Power of God. 

7. All this, however, was only the play or conflict of inor- 
ganic matter. Each form we beheld was lifeless, and each 
motion compelled, or impressed by a force from without. 
After the lapse of an incalculable period, therefore, we sup- 
posed ourselves permitted to revisit the earth, in the expectation 
that, during the mighty interval, another fiat had gone forth, 
and another effect had been produced as wonderful as the first, 
and by means of it. And, imagining ourselves in the situation 
of beings to whom nothing of the kind had been previously 
disclosed, we beheld in the new and sacred principle of organic 
Life, in which innumerable pre-existing phenomena were now 
for the first time employed as means, for the development of 
this mysterious principle as an end, the display of Wisdom. 
We admitted, indeed, that whatever illustrations of taste in 
arrangement, elegance in form, beauty in color, and majesty in 
magnitude and waving motion, the botanical kingdom now for 
the first time exhibited, were to be regarded as indications of 
the Divine complacency in the graceful, the beautiful, and the 
sublime. As effects, they pointed to correspondences infinitely 
greater in their Cause. But, even the manner in which each 
of these effects is produced, is a proclamation of the amazing 
wisdom of the Maker. Nor could we have looked intelligently 
on this new, organized, living kingdom of nature, when first it 
came into existence, without feeling that we were in the pres- 
ence of a Wisdom to us unlimited. 

8. A survey of this advanced stage of the Divine operations 
prepared us to expect, that, in the revolution of ages, the period 
might come when forms of organized being might not only live, 
but move, and be happy. Accordingly, another supposed visit 
to the scene of our meditations being permitted to us, a spec- 
tacle opened to our view which compelled us to exclaim, " How 



HOLINESS. O 

great is his Goodness ! " In the introduction of animal hfe, 
we beheld a being constructed for enjoyment ; each of its move- 
ments yielding it gratification ; each of its senses an inlet to 
pleasure ; and the whole preparing the way for greater enjoy- 
ment still, and finding happiness in the occupation. If the 
reason for the existence of this kmd of life is to be sought in 
the Divine Creator, so also must be the reason of its enjoyment. 
As every effect must be, in some sense, Hke its cause, the origi- 
nation of even a single creature would be, not indeed formally, 
but virtually, a manifestation of some property of the Divine 
Nature. But here was not merely an- individual animal de- 
signed for enjoyment, nor a single species, but a w^orld — a suc- 
cession of worlds, filled with animal enjoyment. What fact of 
the Divine Creator could this display be supposed to manifest, 
but that He, " the Happy God," is good, or delights to impart 
happiness I And as we took our last look at the Pre-Adamite 
Earth, we felt convinced that no inteUigent being could have 
cast back a mental glance to the remote antiquity when the first 
creative fiat w^ent forth, and then have called before his mind 
the long series of creation on creation, with extended intervals 
between, which had since then taken place, without admitting, 
long before he had arrived at the close of his retrospection, the 
all-sufficiency of God for the indefinite enlargement and con- 
tinuance of similar manifestations ; and that long before he had 
deciphered every symbol, and bowed at every altar, sacred to 
the Perfections already manifested, he would have been pre- 
pared for the unveiling of another aspect of the Divine char- 
acter. 

9. But what wiU that next perfection be ? If Power, "Wis- 
dom, and Goodness are not to perpetuate their manifestation by 
multiplying physical creations alone, some other perfection 
must now^ appear wliich shall render the continuation of such 
additions to the mere material world unnecessary. And if all 
which Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness have done already 
is not to exist in vain as a revelation of God to the creature, 
a being must yet be formed capable of recognizing these per- 
fections in what they have already done. The same reason 
which made it infinitely desirable that the glory of God should 
be made objective as all-sufficiency, clearly im^jHed that, when 
displayed, there would be beings to understand it. That race, 
indeed, whenever it shall arrive, may be expected, in harmony 
with what we have found to be an already established law of 
the manifestation, to assume into its nature, under certain qual- 
1* 



ifications, the distinguishing principles of the physical, the 
organic, and the animal creations which have preceded it, and 
thus to form a part of the actual means of the manifestion. 
But the great end and object of the whole require, in the case 
supposed, that the new race of creatures, besides displaying 
the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, in common with 
the pre-existing creations, should be intelligent beings, capable 
of understanding the display. Such a capability will, of course, 
be associated with the power of appreciating what is under- 
stood of the manifestation; for to understand, and yet not to 
appreciate it, would be to defeat the very design of the mani- 
festation. But the system requires that beings capable of 
understanding and appreciating the Divine perfections, and who 
are thus constituted a part of the manifestation, should be capa- 
ble also of consciously and voluntarily promoting the objects 
of the great system, and should be held responsible for under- 
standing, appreciating, and intentionally promoting it, to the 
utmost extent of their means. Now this is only saying that 
man, besides having a physical, organic, and animal nature, will 
be also an inteUigent, moral, and accountable being, and this 
will bring to hght the moral perfection of the Deity — that 
Holiness of nature, or subjective excellence, by which He has 
complacency in all moral goodness ; and that Justice, or objec- 
tive excellence, by which he exhibits His holiness in retributive 
acts. In other words, the earth, sooner or later, will become 
the scene of moral government 

10. But as mighty intervals have separated the stages of the 
Divine Procedure hitherto, will similar intervals separate the 
commg manifestations? Will holiness, after imprinting its 
image on man, reign on earth, and rejoice in its hkeness, for 
an unaccountable period, before punitive Justice folloAvs and 
kindles its fires ? Will Justice then burn for ages, converting 
earth into a place of punishment, before Mercy comes, if it come 
at all, to soothe and to save ? Will all these perfections be dis- 
played in the history of the same race ? Or, will there be a 
race for the display of Holiness, to be succeeded, when re- 
moved, perhaps, nearer to the palace of the Great King, by a 
second race for the display of Hohness and penal Justice? 
And are these again to be succeeded, when removed and ban- 
ished afar from God, by a third race for the display of Holi- 
ness, Justice, and some other attribute — say, Mercy ? Or have 
either of these attributes been elsewhere displayed already? 
displayed by beings who, though not inhabitants of this world, 



HOLINESS. 7 

are yet members of the great system of manifestation, of which 
this world, and all that it contains, ibrm a part ? And if so, is 
it not in harmony with all the past history of the Divine con- 
duct to expect that the introduction of the new race, essentially 
differing from all the past, will involve, or be attended with, a 
new manifestation ? that, besides the Power, and AYisdom, and 
Goodness, and Holiness, and Justice of God, already dis- 
played, the history of man will be made the occasion of a new 
display of the Divine Character ? 

11. That these are not unimportant nor irrelevant questions 
is evident, for God has answered them both in His works and 
in His word. A race of angelic beings, as already intimated, 
had come on the field of the Divine manifestation bright with 
the lustre of holiness. Some, but only some of them, failing to 
keep their first estate, (wherever and whatever that may have 
been,) occasioned the manifestation, foi the first time, of the 
Divine Justice. 

12. Now, let it be supposed that, on our revisiting the earth, 
we had known this ; that, in one part of the universe. Holiness 
was glowing with more than its original radiance ; and that, in 
another part, the punitive Justice of God still maintained its 
a^^ul terrors. On the principle of progressive manifestation 
we should have expected that, if a new race is to be formed, 
and if another attribute remains to be developed, that neAV race 
will be made the 'medium of its revelation. Coming as that 
new race will on the stage of Divine Procedure, at a period 
when Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness, and Holiness, and 
Justice, are already made manifest, we might have expected 
that the great design of another stage of creation will be the 
display of another Divine perfection. 

13. But, according to that law of creation already ascertained, 
which requires that each successive addition shall unite with 
aU that precedes by embodying its elements, and thus display 
in its own individual nature all the perfections which are 
already manifested, we may expect that all the Divine perfec- 
tions already known will be exhibited again, in the history of 
man, before the new display will take place, and preparatory 
to it — in other words, that the coming creation, besides its own 
peculiar additions, will be an epitome of all that has gone 
before. The impending stage of the Divine Procedure, then, 
may be expected to exhibit the attributes of Power, and Wis- 
dom, and Goodness, and Holiness ; and of these, Holiness, as 
expressed in a system of Moral Government, may be looked 



8 MAK. 

for as forming tlie grand characteristic of the new economy as 
compared with all which the eartli has yet exhibited. 

14. Now, supposing it had been permitted as to revisit the 
earth immediately after the creation of man and his introduction 
into Eden, and that the nature of his new constitution had been 
disclosed to us, as well as the nature of his relations to the 
universe, what a grand volume would have been laid open to 
our contemplation illustrative of the moral character of his 
Creator ! Here was a being whose nature is not only a virtual 
compendium of the preceding stages of creation, and, as such, 
an exponent of the power, and ^\'isdom, and goodness of God, 
but in him the laws of matter ai-e to find their interpreter, the 
vegetable kingdom its uses, the animal tribes their sovereign, 
and all creation its subordinate completion and its end. Here 
was a being who, besides being a continuous link in the chain 
of the Divine Manifestation, could, as the creature to whom the 
manifestation is made, turn round and look back upon that chain, 
and, by that very act, show himself to be the most important 
part of it. The created universe is a great system of Divine 
symbols ; and here is the first being the earth has seen capable 
of interpreting them — capable of conceiving of the very prop- 
erties of the Divine character which they are meant to express, 
the ideas they are intended to suggest, and of making them the 
media of intelligent and sympathetic intercourse with the 
Deity. The very first step towards the ptoduction of an ex- 
ternal material economy, presupposed the " eternal power and 
Godhead," and disclosed somewhat of the internal economy of 
the Divme Nature ; and here is a being on whom this external 
economy reacts, as soon as he is placed in relation with it, so 
as to disclose an internal economy of his o^\^a, answering in 
some respects to that of the Lifinite Creator. In this new 
creature we behold a being capable of knowing that which is 
not himself; of breaking away from the chain of mere sensa- 
tions received from this external economy, and in which he 
rather loses than finds himself; and of so looking in upon the 
phenomena of his o^^^l mind as to be made distinctly conscious 
of a three-fold object or element of knowledge — of himself as 
a distinct existence, of the finite creation to which he belongs 
and from which he derives his sensations, and of the Infinite 
Maker of both, presupposed by their existence. Still more : 
here is a Person, a being influenced by motives, determined by 
will, and having a high moral end of his own ; a creature in 
whose mysterious constitution Law and Liberty — perfect Law 



HOLINESS. 9 

and conscious Liberty — harmoniously co-exist ; and whose vol- 
unttuy power renders him at once capable of loving, and a proper 
object of love. And, beyond all, here is a creature who, being 
thus capable of willing, and loving, and of imprinting the proofs 
of these powers on every object around him, is also endowed 
with the profound consciousness of what he ought to do, and 
with the capabiHty of finding his highest happmess in doing it. 
He is a law unto liimself, a self-executing law. He encloses 
within himself a whole system of moral government — laws, and 
judge, and prison, and instruments of torture, if he violate his 
own constitution — conscious improvement, and ever-increasing 
happiness, as the result of conformity to it. Here is an innocent 
being on probation, capable of concei\dng of immortality, and of 
aspiring after it ; his nature enclosing moral possibilities of the 
most opposite kind. A\Tiat if all limitation should be removed 
from them in regard to time, and the coiisequences of his pro- 
bation be allowed to accumulate and extend through all future 
duration ! Surely " there is a spirit in man," a new subjective 
power, a substance capable of examining both its own phenom- 
ena and those of matter ; but finding the former within, and 
the latter lying in a sphere without ; and having to resort to 
consciousness for the one, and to the distinct method of observa- 
tion and experiment for the other. 

15. Now if, according to the law under consideration, every 
created object expresses some property of the Divine Nature, 
how distinct and solemn an utterance of the moral character of 
God is made in the moral constitution of the new creature, 
man. The apparent tautology of the phrase, " Let us make 
man in our image, accm^ding to our likeness,^' * only denotes 
more emphatically, according to a Hebrew idiom, the pre-emi- 
nent moral resemblance of man to God. Everything else only 
discloses a part or property of the Creator ; here, at length, is 
His linage. If man is, in the language of Clement,t " the most 
beautiful hymn to the praise of the Deity," we could not have 
had his moral capabiHties disclosed to us, and have remembered 
that, even in their utmost development, they will not measure 
the same Divine perfection in God, but only indicate its exist- 
ence, infinitely greater, without feeling that the burden, of his 
hymn is that of the seraphim, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord 
God Ahnighty." 

* Gen. i. 26. t See Cohortatio ad Gentes, p. 78. 



10 MAN. 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE PAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 

X. A SECOND principle of the manifestation leads us to expect 
that " all the laws and results of the preceding stages of crea- 
tion will be found brought forwards into the human economy ; 
and that all that is characteristic in those lower steps of the 
process will be carried up into the higher — as far as it may 
subserve the great end ; or unless it should be superseded by 
something analogous in this higher stage." For, were it not 
for this law, the manifestation would be neither progressive nor 
continuous, but would be ever beginning de novo. Everything 
would be isolated. After the Divine Procedure had continued 
for untold ages, all the past would be unknown and lost to the 
present, and to all the future. And the proof of all-sufficiency 
for a connected manifestation would be forever wanting. 

2. An inspection of man's constitution alone would supply 
abundant illustration of the fulfilment of this law. But we have 
now reached a point in the development of the Divine Plan 
which gives us access to the Word of God, in addition to the 
more ancient volume of His works. The latter, indeed, is still 
available in indicating the probable geological period since 
which man has been added to the inhabitants of the earth ; but 
the Bible, besides enabling us to assign, within certain limits, 
the chronological date of man's appearance, supplies information 
of peculiar interest respecting the creative process which intro- 
duced that great event. What circumstances may have attended 
preceding creations, we know not, but the record of man's crea- 
tion is deemed of sufficient importance to be accompanied v/ith 
an account of the miraculous scenes which introduced it. And 
as those scenes are found to illustrate our law, as well as the 
constitution of the newly-created man, to these we shall direct 
our attention first. 

3. Before proceeding to prove this, it is important rightly to 
estimate the character of the Mosaic account of the creation. 
Having no reason whatever to regard it as a poem, a myth, a 
philosophic speculation, a translated hieroglyph, or in any other 
light than that which it assumes to be — a history of facts, of 
Divine origin, conveyed through the limitation of a human 
medium, and for human use — we find, on reading it, that it 



THE PAST BROtJGST FORWARD. 11 

exhibits precisely those characteristics which analogy would 
have led us to expect. 

4. It is strictly anthropopathic, or in harmony with the feel- 
ings, views, and popular modes of expression which prevail in 
an early state of society, and which are always best adapted for 
universal use. Hence the colloquial, or dramatic, style of the 
account. For example: And God said — not that there was 
any vocal utterance, where, as yet, there was no ear to hear, 
(each of which would imply a corporeal structure) — let there he 
light — let there he a firmament — let the earth bring forth — by 
vvhich we are to understand that these effects were produced 
just as if such a fiat had been, in each instance, vocally uttered, 
and such a formula actually employed. The bare volitions of 
the Infinite Mind are deeds. So, again, when it is said that 
God " rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had 
made ; " the truth involved obviously is, not that of reposing 
from fatigue, for Inspiration itself affirms that " the Creator of 
the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary," but that of 
ceasing or desisting from a process which has reached comple- 
tion. The pause at the close of the sixth day, and the contin- 
uation of it on the opening of the seventh, resembled the quiet 
of a person relaxing and at rest aftr^r a laborious and exhausting 
process. But the objection urged by a so-called spiritual philos- 
ophy against such anthropopathia is ultimately unfounded and 
suicidal. That philosophy itself is unavoidably anthropopathic 
in its very denunciations of anthropopathia. Necessarily, its 
language is " of the earth, earthy," — limited and colored by 
the sensuous media through which it comes. The utmost it can 
hope to achieve is to escape from a gross to a more refined, to 
ascend from a lower to a higher, range of anthropomorphism. 
The danger is less in proportion as it gets away from the sen- 
sible to the abstract, it should find that it is leaving behind it aU 
definite and distinct views of the Deity, and is emerging into 
an atmosphere too rarefied for piety to live and move in. 

5. In order to interpret the Mosaic cosmogony aright, another 
fact to be borne in mind is, that every visible object is spoken 
of, not according to its scientific character — that would have 
been not merely improper but impossible, except at the price of 
consistency — but optically, or according to its appearance;* 

* " Should a stickler for Copernicus and the time system of the world," 
says J. D. Michaelis, " carry his zeal so far as to say, the city of Berlin 
sets at such an hour^ instead of making use of the common expression, the 
sun sets at Berlin at such an hour, he speaks the truth to be sure, but his 



12 MAN. 

just as, with all our knowledge of the solar system, we speak, 
even m scientific works, of the sun as rising and setting. For 
example : had there been an unscientific human spectator of the 
creative process, the atmosphere would have appeared to his 
eye as it does still to every untutored eye, a firm and solid 
expanse, sustaining the waters above. The sun and the moon 
would have appeared to be " two great lights " of nearly equal 
magnitude, compared with which all the astral systems deserved 
only that which is allotted to them — a passing word. The 
describer is supposed to occupy an earthly position — himself 
the centre of the universe. The earth is said to have brought 
forth grass, and the waters to have produced hving creatures ; 
though we are to believe that no creative power was delegated 
to the elements to produce them, but that they were made in 
full perfection by the simple volition of Omnipotence ; but then, 
to a human looker-on, they would so appear to have been pro- 
duced. And the fiat is said to have been issued, " Let the diy 
land appear ; " when there was no human eye to see it ; but had 
there been a spectator, it would have risen to his view as if 
such a command had been hterally given. And if to this optical 
mode of description it be objected that as there was no human 
spectator, the account can only be received and interpreted as 
an allegorical representation, we reply that it is the very method 
for answering its great design — that of being popularly intel- 
ligible ; and that the way in which it becomes both intelligible 
and vividly graphic is by placing the reader, in imagination, in 
the position of a spectator.* But much more inconsistent are 

manner of speaking it is pedantry." — Essay on the Influence of Opiraons 
on Language, and of Language on Opinions. 1769. 

^ Gen. i. 25 ; ii. 5. In accordance with this rule of interpretation, we 
find Gregory of Nyssa, (394,) who wrote an apologetic explanation of the 
six days' work^ teaching that the phrase, " ' God said,' should not be un- 
derstood of an articulate sound : a supposition which were contrary to the 
nature and unbecoming the majesty of God, but of an intimation of icill." 
Similar is the remark thiit it " is the manner of Scripture to describe what 
appears to be, instead of what really is.'' — Ep. de Pythonissa, p. 870. And 
Chrysostom, on Gen. i. 5, says, "Do you see what condescension (accom- 
modation to our weakness) tliis blessed prophet (Moses) has used: or, 
rather, the benevolent God, by the mouth of the prophet ? . . . the Holy 
Spirit moved the tongue of the prophet in adaptation to the weakness of 
the hearers, and thus expressed all things to us in an intelligible manner 

utters everything in conformity with the manner of men. — Hom. in 

Gen. vol. i. pp. 12, 13. Quoted by Dr. Davidson in Bib. Hermeneutics, 
pp. 118, 120. 

To the same effect is the great Talmudic maxim, The expressions used 
in the law are like the ordinary language of mankind. De Sola's New Trans- 



THE PAST BROUGHT FOraVARD. 13 

those who, while they would admit tliat, in all instances we 
have named, and in many others, the language is evidently that 
of optical description, vrould yet regard the extension of the 
same principle of interpretation to the account of the creation 
of the sun on the fourth day, as a sacrihce of the truth of inspi- 
ration ; although it is said that God made a firmament or solid 
plane to sustain the clouds on the second day, as distinctly as 
that he made the sun on the fourth day. The former, however, 
they would explain optically ; the latter, with a rigorous liter- 
ality. Surely some steadier rule of interpretation than that of 
caprice should be adopted, and a more charitable construction 
than that usually held should be put on the conduct of those who 
think they have found that rule, not in popular whim and preju- 
dice, but in the Sacred Record itself. 

6. But not only is the language of the INIosaic cosmogony 
popular, and that of a supposed witness, it relates specifically 
to the race of man. Besides being prepared for man, it con- 
cerns itself chiefly, if not exclusively, with v/hat belongs to 
him. Of the creation of angels nothing is said. Respecting 
the starry heavens a brief clause is emploj^ed ; for what are 
they all to man, in his present state, compared with the sun 
which makes his day, the moon which rules his night, and the 
earth on which he dwells. In the account of the vegetable 
creation, no mention is made of timber-trees, the giants of the 
botanical kingdom; the history is confined to the production 
of grasses, or food for cattle ; to herbs, or grain and leguminous 
plants for his own use, and to fruit-bearing trees ; all relating, 
directly or indirectly, to the wants and conveniences of man- 
kind. Nor does the account of the animal creation contain a. 
hint in reference to the production of stationary beings, or of 
microscopic animalcules, though these form numerically the 
vast majority of animal existences. The history relates to the 
familiarly known, the visible, and the useful, among animals. 
Man himself is described as created last ; plainly intimating 
that all which had gone before was only a means of which he 
was to be the subordinate end. And not only the process, but 
even its termination is made to subserve his welfare, for it is 
laid as a reason for the institution of the Sabbath. If the crea- 
tion Itself then, be thus designed to subserve his welfare, it is 
only in harmony with tliis fact that the account of the creation 

lation of the S. S., vol. i. p. 19, 1844. See also Dr. J. P. Smith's Scripture 
and Geology, pp. 241, 266. Sec. Ed. 

2 



14 MAN. 

should be given in a style so familiar as to be easily understood 
by him ; in a manner so graphic as to make him present, and 
to paint it to his eye ; and that it should confine itself chiefly to 
that which more immediately concerns him. 

7. The Scriptural account of creation is in strict analogy 
with the prevailing character of the Divine arrangements. To 
have spoken scientifically of the subject — in other words, to 
have made science the subject of revelation — would have been 
to degrade the character of revelation by making it minister to 
man's curiosity ; to defeat its unique design by diverting his 
attention from the permanent to the passing, aggravating the 
very evil it was meant to remedy by absorbing lihn in the inter- 
ests of the present ; for if it expounded science, why not also 
art, political economy, and all the formulae of civilization ? and 
to repeal some of the deep-laid laws of the Divine plan, and, 
as such, to impugn the Divine origin of the revelation ; for the 
entire scheme of things is constructed with a view, not to ex- 
empt man from effort, but to invite him to it ; to enable him 
to make discoveries for himself ; to engage his powers so as to 
reward them, and by engaging and rewarding to augment them. 
But the sacredness of its origin is deducible from more than 
analogical grounds. Even in a literary respect it is unique. 
Ease, simplicity, and grandeur characterize its statements. 
Myth and speculation are unknown to it ; the historical element 
predominates. No other ancient cosmogony will sustain a com- 
parison with it.* While philosophy was still breathing mist, 
and living in a chaos, the opening sentence of the Bible had 
been shining on the Hebrew mind for centuries, a ray direct 
from heaven. Nor has science been able to transcend that sub- 
fime affirmation. It is too spiritual for materialism to embrace ; 
too personal and substantial for pantheism to dissipate. True, 
the narrative of the Adamic creation which follows that primary 
announcement wears a peculiar form ; the spirit is clothed in 
mortal vesture-; but the Divine image shines through. Ob- 
scured though it may sometimes have been by the false glosses 
of its friends, the transfiguring power of the indwelling truth 
cannot be concealed. Science has had to recal her imputations 
on it, and to confess herself forestalled in her own department. 
Modern scepticism may be safely challenged even to imagine a 
more credible account of creation.f As science multiplies her 

* Euseb. Pra3p. Evang. lib. i. cc. 9, 10. Cory's Fragments, p. 26. Faber's 
Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. i. p. 232. 
t As an example, see Oken's Isis, (1819,) p. 1117 



THE PAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 15 

ascertained results, new accordances with the Biblical narrative 
come to light. The higher deductions of reason harmonize 
with it. Nor can the time be hopelessly distant when, in the 
blended radiance of revelation and science, nothing shall be left 
for their mutual friends to deplore but the long want of that 
wise confiding patience, and that candid forbearance, which 
would have hastened their union, and have added to their lustre. 

8. Now, the creative process immediately preparatory to the 
coming of man, as described in the opening of the Book of 
Genesis, is remarkably illustrative of the . law at present under 
consideration. Thus, no intimation is given that a particle of 
new matter was originated on the occasion. The Adamic 
" earth " was formed from the matter which had been created 
"in the beginning" — at a period indefinitely distant — and 
every atom of which existed still, notwithstanding all the com- 
binations and changes which it had undergone. 

9. That the ancient oripjinating act is described in the sen- 
tence placed at the opening of the Bible, appears evident from 
such considerations as these : First, the creative acts of the 
second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, begin with the for- 
mula, And God said ; it is only natural to conclude, therefore, 
that the creative act of the first day begins with the third 
verse, where the same formula is first employed, " And God said. 
Let there be light." But if so, it follows that the act described 
in the first verse, and the chaotic state of the earth spoken of 
in the second, must have both belonged to a period anterior to 
the first day. Secondly, the only adequate reason assignable 
for the account given in the second verse is to prepare the 
reader for the description which follows of the six days' work ; 
for it both intimates the necessity for such work by affirming 
the chaotic condition of the earth, and describes the Spirit of 
God as brooding over the chaos, preparatory to it. Not only 
the originating act in the first verse, therefore, but also the com- 
me?icement of the energizing process in the second, appears to 
have preceded the opening fiat of creation on the first day, and 
to have been introductory to it. Thirdly, if it be admitted that 
the regular unfolding of the six days' work begins with the 
utterance of the first fiat in the third verse, it follow^s that the 
origination of the earth, in the first verse, was anterior to and 
independent of it ; for no such an act is again adverted to in 
the subsequent verses.* In other words, the same material, 

* See on Gen. i. 1 — 3. " Pre- Adamite Earth," pp. 273 — 281. 



1 6 MAX. 

onglnated at aii unknoAVTi period before, and which had been 
ah-eady employed in successive formations of the earth, was 
now to be employed anew in the Adamic earth. 

10. At the eventful moment when, according to the Di^-ine 
pm-pose, the Adamic creation was to commence, " the eailh 
was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep." How much of the entire sm^ace of the planet was 
in this chaotic state, is not ascertainable. The generality of the 
Mosaic statement is quite compatible with the limited extent of 
ihe, chaos described.* The just inference appears to be, that 
the desolation and ruin were universal over that region which 
was about to be prepared for the reception of the first man and 
his antediluvian posterity. Now that the desolation was not 
rcniversal over the globe, geological evidence abundantly attests.f 
Even the great epochs of geology do not exhibit signs of uni- 
versal disorder and ruin ; much less do the tertiary and post- 
tertiary changes of our planet. And that the creation which 
followed the chaos of which we are now speaking, was local, 
seems clear from Gen. ii. 19, 20 : "And out of the ground the 
Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of 
the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would 
call them ; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, 
that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cat- 

* The Hebrew term, pronounced eretz^ whence, ultimately, our eaiih.^ is 
by no means restricted to the single meaning of the entire planet. Some- 
times, like its equivalent in other languages, it is employed in opposition 
to the lieaven, Gen. i. 1 ; and to the seas, Gen. i. 10. Sometimes it stands 
for a particular land or country, Gen. ii. 1 1 ; Ex. iii. 8 ; for a piece of land, 
a Jield, Gen. xxiii. 15 ; for the gi'ound, xxxiii. 3 ; for earthy matter, Ps. xii. 
7 ; and, at others, for the inhabitants of a land, and of the world. If, now, 
it should be insisted on, notwithstanding these instances (a few among 
many) of the varied apj^lication of the word eaHh, that it must have pre- 
cisely tlie same extent of application in the second verse of Gen. i. which 
it has in the first verse, I can only suppose that the objector has some par- 
ticular thcoiy to sustain by his interpretation. It is of little weight for 
him to allege that the general reader would infer from the second verse 
that the chaos was universal. To a human spectator surA-eying the scene 
from the centre, it would doubtless have appeared universal ; and the 
description, we repeat, is optical, or according to the appearances of things. 
But as, even in this opening history, the term earth is applied to the entire 
planet, to the dry land on its surface, and then to a single district, we are 
left to infer the extent of chaos spoken of in the second verse, by an ex- 
amination of the context, if it contains any evidence on the subject, and 
by an investigation of the earth itself, and not by the arbitrary construc- 
tion of a term. 

t Lyell's Principles of Geology, B. I. cc. x. xiii. : B. HI. c. xi. 



THE PAST r.IlOUGllT FORAVARD. 17 

tie, and to the fowl of the air, aiid to every beast of the field." 
Here it is affirmed tiiat all the land-animals which were then 
created were brought to the father of mimkind to be distin- 
guished and named. Now, unless it be assumed that animals 
alike from the torrid zone and from the arctic circle were mira- 
culously wafted across deserts and oceans to the Hmits of Eden, 
or else that they were created in Eden to be subsequently 
transported to their respective regions, (either assumption in- 
volving a cluster of extravagances wdiich is surely too enormous 
to be entertained,) it follows that the animals said to have been 
brought to Adam were such as were henceforth to inhabit the 
Edenic region, probably such as were suited for domestication 
and use, and that such only were at that time created. 

11. The situation of this important region can only be spoken 
of generally. It w\as ^^ eastward," "^ or an eastern country; 
that is, it lay easterly from Palestine, the probable station-point 
of the writer. Of the river-system f which is described as char- 
acterizing it immediately after the Adamic creation, the Plu-at 
and the Hiddekel are generally agreed to be the Euphi-ates and 
the Tigris. Wliile the land of gold and of precious stones 
through which tw^o of the rivers passed, assists us further in at 
least approximating to the birth-place of man. The garden of 
Eden was probably situated on the southern slope of Armenia ; 
for the greater part of this country, constituting an elevated 
table-land, with numerous ranges of higher mountains rising 
above it, is intersected in all directions by rapid streams ; and 
here the Euphrates and Tigi'is have their rise, not far from each 
other. But Eden itself may have embraced the fairest portion 
of Asia and a part of Africa. The probability is, however, that 
it was limited to that portion of Asia w^liich is bounded by the 
Indian Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Ai-abian Desert, on the 
south; by the Caucasian Mountains, the Caspian Sea, and 
Tai-tary, on the north ; by the chains of Taurus and Amanus, 
on the west ; and, on the east, by the high land which, in the 
steppe of the Kirghis, connects the western ridges of the Altai 
mountains and the Himalaya range, about the sources of the 
Ganges; comprehending a tract lying betw^een 25° and 40° 
N. latitude, and betw^een 30° and 80° E. longitude. 

12. Whatever may have been the condition, at that time, of 

* Gen. ii. 8, ta^llSlS (the prep, a often makes a periphrasis of the gen- 
itive,) of the eastern country — 1. e., towards^ or at, the east, 
t Gen. ii. 10 — 14. 

5* 



18 



MAN. 



Other parts of the surface of our planet, here was a region 
which a tremendous cataclysm, at some previous period, had 
superficially convulsed and laid utterly waste. To a human 
eye surveying the desolation from the centre, the anarchy 
would appear' to be universal ; and, probably, so extensive and 
ruinous was it, that the equilibrium of nature was disturbed in 
regions far beyond the centre and actual scene of the chaos. 
The physical cause of the convulsion may have been the sub- 
sidence, owing to an igneous movement below, (one of a series 
to which that portion of the earth is still subject, for it forms 
part of the great volcanic range extending from Central Asia 
to the Azores,) of a considerable region ; for the surface is de- 
scribed as being covered with w^ater. One of the consequences 
was a tliick darkness. Even an ordinary cloud will conceal 
the sun. A dense fog will render artificial light necessary at 
noon-day. A local convulsion of the earth has been known to 
envelope a district of many miles extent in midnight gloom. 
Wliat, then, may we suppose to have been the turbid and opaque 
condition of the atmosphere, when all its elements over a wide 
region Avere in a state of conflicting activity and revolution ! 

13. On the face of tliis troubled deep the Spirit of God 
brooded; and to the profound gloom of the atmosphere the 
voice of Omnipotence said. Be Light. The laws of gravity, of 
molecular attraction, and of light, were forthwith so recalled 
into operation, that the surging deep began to be ti'anquillized. 
The restoration of light was the chief w^ork of the first day ; 
or, as it must have appeared to a terrestrial spectator, had there 
been one, its production. But that this light was at first only 
very partially reproduced, is evident from the work assigned to 
the second day ; for the atmosphere was still laden Tvath dense 
watery vapor, which must have rendered it a very imperfect 
medium for the light, and probably unfit for organic life. This 
vapor, therefore, was next collected into floating masses, or 
clouds, and become " the waters above the firmament," in dis- 
tinction from " the waters " which still overflowed the earth 
" under the firmament." The bahmced condition of the atmos- 
phere having been thus compai-atively restored, the Divine 
Creator proceeded, on the third day, to arrange the surface of 
the earth. He bade the waters to collect and confine them- 
selves witliin certain boundaries. And as this could take place 
only by the upheaving of the subjacent land. He called for 
" the dry land to appear : and it was so." Everlasting hills 
lifted themselves up, and awaited his further command. The 



THE rAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 19 

fiat, it will be observea, is not now creative, but formative, and 
is represented as being issued, not to the land, but to the v/ater ; 
for, owing to its greater mobility, it would have appeared to a 
spectator to be hastening iaway and voluntarily giving place to 
tlie land, rather than as being actually displaced by it. Yet 
the running off of the waters was doubtless the effect of the 
miraculous elevation of the land. Vegetation was called for, 
and the newly raised lands were forthwith covered with grasses, 
herbs, and fruit trees — terms designating, by a common figure, 
the whole vegetable kingdom. The morning of the fourth day 
dawned, and behold, not now a dubious and gloomy twilight, 
but the sun itself enthroned, and " rejoicing as a strong man 
to run a race." Of course, by a spectator then standing on the 
earth for the first time, the appearance of the sun, and perhaps 
of tlie moon in another part of the heavens at the same time, 
would have been regarded as the sudden production of " two 
great lights." These luminaries, Hght-dispensers, or light- 
bearers, the Divine Creator now " made," in the common sense 
of appointed, to serve a purpose which they had never answered 
before, (inasmuch as there had been no intelHgent beings on the 
earth to appropriate them to the use,) to " be for signs and for 
seasons, and for days and for years," to liis coming creature — 
man. And now again " the stars " shone forth. The Jifth 
morning of creation came : and the waters teemed with fish, and 
birds winged their way through the air. " And God blessed 
them, saying. Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in 
the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth," a commission 
which obviously recognized the ordinance of animal death, and 
involved its necessity ; as the grant of the green herb for food 
involved the condition of vegetable death : for continued propa- 
gation supposes the removal of some, at least, of the preceding 
generations, otherwise room and food would soon be wanting. 
The sixth day beheld the occupation of the earth by land- 
animals of various tribes : and the Glorious Creator saw that 
the whole "was good." Of man's creation — the last and 
crowning act of the Divine process — we shall speak presently. 
14. As far, then, as the law now under consideration relates 
to the preparation of the region destined for man's immediate 
abode, its conditions are all satisfied. Often, before, we are to 
suppose, the same tract of the earth's surface had been the 
scene of Creative intervention. Very various and conclusive 
evidence exists that, at an early period of the ancient earth, 
the northern hemisphere was almost entirely submerged. But 



20 MAN. 

after the formation of the carboniferous strata, land was suc- 
cessively upheaved from the deep by repeated convulsions, and 
the physical geography of those regions greatly modified. So 
recently as the tertiary period, the great lowland of Siberia — 
an area nearly equal to all Europe — appears, from the char- 
acter of its marine strata, to have emerged. Shells of tertiary 
species have been found in the plains of Ai-menia.* And fossil 
remains of still existing species inhabiting valleys and plains 
have been found lodged in the peaks of the Sewahk range,t 
westward of the river Jumna, indicating the comparatively recent 
action of a subterraneous upheaving force. Indeed, the volcanic 
region commencing in China and Tartary extends through the 
Caspian to the Caucasus, the countries bordering the Black 
Sea, and through part of Asia Minor to Syria ; still keeping it, 
at times and in places, in \dolent commotion. But as often as 
such Pre-Adamite disturbance and consequent desolation had 
occurred, the Divine Creator had renewed the face of the earth, 
and, in the later epochs, had successively placed on its surface 
new forms of animal life. In a similar manner, on the present 
occasion, the face of the ancient earth is once more renewed. 
It is not said that, on the third day. He called new matter 
into existence ; but that He gave to the confused and conflict- 
ing materials already existing, a new arrangement. All the 
mechanical and chemical laws which the ancient physical crea- 
tion had known were again reinstated in power, and resumed 
their tranquil operation. The laws of organic life were sum- 
moned anew to activity ; and sentient existence reappeared in 
the fulness of enjoyment.^ Or, taking the order of the Divine 
Perfections which the Pre-Adamite Earth displayed — Power 
had first stilled the conflict of chaos, and restored the reign of 
pre-existing physical law over inorganic nature ; and hence, in 
the Ruach Elohim, or Spirit of God, of Gen. i. 2, the predom- 
inant idea is that of power. Wisdom employed inorganic mat- 
ter as means for the accomplislmient of organic ends — clothing 
the earth with vegetable Hfe and beauty. And Goodness once 



* Mr. W. J. Hamilton's " Tour in Asia Minor," ii. 386. 

t Falconer and Cautley, in Proceed. Geol. Soc, Nov. 15, 1843. 

} In the second edition of his " Scripture and Geology," the Rer. Dr. 
J. P. Smith remarks on the phrases, Let the waters breed, and the earth 
brought forth, that " the kernel of truth which they enclose is, that animal 
and vegetable bodies are organized out of the very materials which con- 
stitute water and the commonest minerals." — P. 279, Note. 



THE PAST BE OUGHT FORAVAED. 21 

more called for various orders of animal existence, and filled 
the whole witli enjoyment. 

15. But were the laws of nature as known to the ancient 
eai'th, and now recalled into operation in his Edenic region, 
uUroduced and embodied in the constitution of the new-made, man ? 
This is the condition which the Law now under consideration 
especially requires. 

Vv^e have seen the preparations made for the presence of the 
coming human being. The mansion is ready, but, as yet, the 
inhabitant is not. Here is the temple complete ; the worshipper 
is now to be created. Eden is waiting to "yield its fruits; but 
" there is not a man to till the ground." Was not His absence 
felt as a want, a state of unsatisfied incompletion ? Did not 
creation await His coming with suspense ? Did not a universal 
silence reign to hear the mandate for His creation issued ? Let 
it be remarked, however, that the form of the Creative fiat is 
now changed. He who hath said. Let there he light, saith not, 
Let there he man. The Creator himself, as if to mark the 
importance of the crisis, is described as having paused. To 
denote the new style and superior excellence of the work which 
is now to be performed, the Elohim is represented as proceed- 
ing to it deliberately, and as the result of self-consultation. To 
indicate the God-like character and destiny of the creature, the 
'' Elohim said, Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
ness, and let them have dominion over all the earth." *■ And to 
represent the direct and peculiar derivation of the new creature, 
he is described as formed by the immediate hand, and inspired 
by the in-breathing of the Godhead. 

16. A priori, indeed, it might have been said with a feeling 
of wondering interest. What will, what can be, the mysterious 
constitution of a creature whose high destiny it is that he is to 
read the creation as a manifestation of the Deity, himself being, 
by that very act, and by the power of perfoiming it, superior to 
all the rest of creation ! What a vast advance will he present 
on all that has previously existed ! However far the mere 
animal may have proceeded along the brightening upward path 
which man is meant to travel, even if it went considerably 
beyond its present stage, the interval which separates it from 
the coming human being would yet be vast, greater than any 
known on earth before. And if for no other reason, for this, 
that the mere animal, by its destitution of those properties 

* Gen. i. 26. 



22 



MAN. 



which are to bring man into a moral econoiny, and to render 
him capable of sympathizing with the ultimate end of that 
economy, proves that its relation to man is that of means to an 
end. Surely (it might on these grounds have been said) man 
will have little or nothing in common with the material nature 
of the preceding creation ! Contrary, however, to such an ante- 
cedent expectation, it follows, if our theory of the Divine Pro- 
cedure be correct, that, vastly superior as man must be by the 
nature of his destiny, to all the past, equally certain it is that 
he will take up into his constitution the essential elements of all 
that has gone before him ; and that thus in common with 
them, he will display the power, and wisdom, and goodness of 
God. 

17. (1.) Then, first, as part of a material universe, he may be 
expected to be, partly at least, material or physical, and subject 
to physical laws. Contrary to all antecedent views, as this ex- 
pectation might have appeared, the physiological truth is, that 
the human body is composed of the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, 
and nitrogen, the lime and sulphur, iron, phosphorus, and some 
other substances, of the mineral kingdom. And, although this 
fact could not have been known scientifically until modern 
chemistry disclosed it, the Mosaic history announced with unfal- 
tering accent — " And the Lord God formed the man dust from 
the ground ; " aphar — dust, denoting the sand, clay, lime, and 
common constituents of the general soil. And the same fact 
is commemorated in the name by which the father of man- 
kind is known, for the verse just quoted is, hterally rendered — 
"Jehovah Elohim formed the adam (or man) dust from the 
adamah, or ground," the name being derived from the material 
of which the body was composed. And hence man is amenable 
to the laws of gravitation, mechanical force, chemical action, 
electricity, and light ; and, as we shall hereafter show, much of 
his practical wisdom througli life consists in conforming to 
them. 

18. (2.) Besides being a material existence, man must, for 
the same reason, be an organized being, and subject to organic 
laws. Accordingly, every great characteristic by which vege- 
table life is distinguished, both from inorganic matter and from 
animal life, is to be found in man. In distinction from the 
former, he is nourished and grows by a power of approi)riation 
within, vitalizing that which he appropriates, and imparting to 
the matter yitalized the power of acting in the same way on 
other substances. And in distinction from the latter, his organic 



THE PAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 23 

or vegetative life, of which the centre is the heart, acts continu- 
ously, unconsciously, and independently of the will. 

19. (3.) For the same reason man may be expected to be 
endowed with animal life. Accordingly, it is said in anthro- 
popathic language, that God "breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life, and man became a Hving or animated being." 
As such, he occupies his appropriate place at the head of the 
Vertebral Division. Physiologists have even affirmed that 
man's affinity with the animal kingdom is such that, during the 
period of his growth before birth, he assumes in succession 
many of the characters of the different Classes of that Division, 
and assumes them in the same order in which they are said to 
have been called into existence,* and in which also Geology 
indicates they were created from the first. This, however, is to 
confound resemblance with identity.! For it is also admitted, 
at the same time, that amidst all the partial analogies and 
resemblances of the Classes in question, each, at the very same 
time, exhibits certain specific characteristics of its own, which 
form an impassable partition between it and the class which it 
may most nearly resemble. 

20. The consideration of the characteristic and superior 
organization of man, we reserve for Chapter the Fifth. For the 
present, it is only proper to speak of him in those leading 
respects in which he agrees with the class to which he belongs. 

First. On the subject of nutrition, it will at present suffice to 
remark that, while to the rest of the animal kingdom, a grant 
was made by the Creator of the gramineous and herbaceous 
substances, to man was given the use of all grain-bearing and 
leguminous plants, and of fruit trees. 

21. Second. In relation to the propagation of the species, the 
same analogy was observed. For, as the Creator had said to the 
inferior animals, " Be fruitful and multiply," so, when God had 
" created man in his own image," it is added, " in the image of 
God created He him, male and female created He them. And 
God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful and 
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." 

22. In the Mosaic account of the creation of woman, a new 
and striking illustration occurs of the law now under consider 
ation. In the creation of man, we have just seen that even the 
miracle did not deviate from this law ; that the Almighty Maker 
did not originate a new material out of which to form him, but 

* Gen. i. 20 — 25. t Pre- Adamite Earth, pp. 134 — 137. 



24 MAN. 

simply employed a new combination of pre-existing materials. 
And, in accordance with the same principle, when the woman 
was to be formed, the Divine Creator, instead of going back 
even so far as to the dust of the earth for the material, as in the 
case of man, is beautifully and significantly represented as 
employing a portion of the new-made man himself; thus, in a 
single act, assuming and embodying all the prior laws of the 
creation. 

23. Here, if anywhere, the question naturally arises, whether 
all the varieties of mankind have descended from a single pair. 
Whether or not this question should be regarded as equivalent 
to an inquiry respecting the unity of the species, depends 
entirely on our definition of a species. If we regard a species 
as an assemblage of individuals related to each other through 
descent from a common and original pair or stock — the two 
questions are identical. If, however, we describe a species to 
be all the individuals which, having some organic characteristic, 
transmit it to their successors, together with the same power of 
reproduction — or say that fertile offspring constitutes the proof 
of identity of species — we are stating a criterion rather than a 
definition, and one which does not repose on absolutely unex- 
ceptionable facts. Besides, the human race might, according 
to this view, have formed one species, and yet have descended, 
hypothetically, from more than a single pair. For it is ante- 
cedently conceivable that the Divine Creator might have seen 
fit to create more than one parent stock, and then by distin- 
guishing them with this characteristic — the perpetuity of prop- 
agation — they might have been truly described as " of one 
blood." Indeed, the identity of humanity cannot be regarded 
as dependent on, or necessitated by, an identity in the means 
of original production^ — except as the Creator is pleased to 
establish such an arrangement; and hence each of the first 
three human beings was produced in a manner circumstantially 
different. The unity of the species is dependent on the fact 
that God has willed that, notwithstanding all man's circumstan- 
tial varieties, our moral and intelligent natures should be realh- 
and truly identical. 

24. That all the families of mankind have actually descended 
from a single pair, appears, however, to be taught in the 
account of the Adamic creation, and God appears to have 
designed this fact to be both the means and the exponent of 
this unity. This is evident from the first employment of the 
word Adam : " Let us make man [Adam] in our own image, 



THE PAST BROUGHT FOraYARD. 25 

after our own likeness, and let tliem have dominion ; * here the 
plural verb shows that the name had l^een employed collectively, 
as equivalent to mankind. "And God created the man [the 
Adam] in liis own image ; in the image of God created He 
him ; male and female created He them." Here, both the 
application of " male and female " to the Adam, and the plural 
pronoun at the end of the verse, show that the name is used 
generically, and that it is equivalent to the Jirst of manldnd. 
The word Adam, then, was not at first a proper name, but an 
appellative noun for the human species ; its application to the 
first man, as his proper name, was subsequent and secondary. 
Nor did it ever lose its primary appellative signification. For, 
besides that it has no plural form, it is very often employed in 
the Old Testament in a collective sense, to denote mankind — 
the human race. And although it is not iiecessary, as we have 
already intunated, that the " one blood " f of the human species 
should be construed to signify descent from a common ancestry, 
yet the probability is that as dam, the Hebrew word for " blood," 
is a derivative from A-dam, the idea in the mind of the Apostle 
when he employed the phrase, was, that from one Adam, or 
man, God had caused to spring " all the nations of the earth." 

25. The common origin of mankind, which is thus indicated, 
involves, indeed, a problem, or rather a group of problems, of 
difficult solution. And this might have been antecedently 
expected; considering that it relates to an order of beings 
capable, from its original constitution, of incomparably greater 
deviations from a normal model, or standard, than any other 
class of sentient existences, and an order wliich has placed 
itself, for thousands of years, under the influence of a great 
variety of transforming conditions, without preserving a record 
of the processes through which it has passed. But to enter at 
any length into the investigation here, would be premature, since 
it belongs properly to the natural history of man, whereas we 
have now to do with his origin and constitution. For the present, 
it is sufficient to remark, that as far as the investigation has been 
pursued, since Blumenbach began his extensive researches into 
the comparative anatomy of human races, and Dr. Prichard % 



* Gen. i. 26. 

t Acts xvii. 26, 6 Qebg . . . eTToiTjai re e| ivdg alfzaro^ tvuv Idvog avd-po)- 

TTUV. 

X See his admirable " Researches into the Physical History of Man- 
kind," and the " Natural History of Man." 



26 



MAN. 



explored their comparative physiology and psychology, tlie 
difficulties attending the theory of a common ancestry have 
been diminishing. 

26. Blumenbach, proceeding on Anatomical grounds, distri 
buted mankind into five groups — chiefly according to the con 
formation of the skull — the Caucasian, Mongohan, Ethiopian, 
American, and Malayan, an arrangement which Cuvier adopted. 
According to Dr. Prichard, the leading tj^pes of cranial config- 
uration are only three — the elliptical, the pyramidal, and the 
prognathous, or jaw-projecting. It is observable, however, that 
the retreating forehead of the latter class does not necessarily 
infer that the capacity of the cranial cavity is less than that of 
either of the other types — the difference being one of form, or 
of greater backward elongation ; that the prognathous type is 
neither common nor peculiar to African nations ; Avhile there is 
abundant evidence to show that the elhptical form of the Indo- 
Atlantic group passes off, by insensible degrees, into the pyra- 
midal type of the Mongohan, and that the prognathous form 
approaches, and, in many instances, joins on to, both of these. 
On the one hand, these typical characters are not invariably 
transmitted — and yet such permanence appears to be essential 
to the theory of an original diversity of stocks; and on the 
other, as w^e pass from one group of nations to another, the 
widest extremes of cranial configuration are found to be con- 
nected by forms so finely graduated as to defy demarcation. 

27. Physiology demonstrates the identity of the various tribes 
of mankind in all the great laws of the animal economy. Dr. 
Prichard has shown that, wdiile animal races specifically dis- 
tinct, but very nearly resembling each other, exhibit the most 
marked differences in the phenomena of reproduction, in the 
period of gestation, in liability to disease, and in the duration 
of life, the various branches of the human family are, in all 
these respects, substantially alike. And it is especially perti- 
nent to the subject to add that, while it is almost unexception- 
ably true that distinct species of animals do not propagate 
so as to perpetuate hybrid races, the mixed offspring of men of 
the most distinct diversities are the more vigorous and prohfic 
for the union ; involving the necessary inference that such diver- 
sities are only variations of the same species. 

28. The most dissimilar races are found also to be Psycho- 
logically identical. Tribes rashly proscribed as on a level with 
the brute, have in our own day vindicated their claim to a common 
humanity. The metropolis of civilization is not without its 



THE PAST BROUGHT FORWAllD. 27 

degraded Buslimen, while the aboriginal Australian is not inca- 
pable of European cultivation. As far as we know, no race of 
men stands in intellectual or moral isolation. All are amenable 
to the same laws of motive and action. Sympathies and emo- 
tions in common proclaim " the whole world kin." 

29. In each of these departments, History, in connection 
with Physical Geography, adduces evidence that the diversities 
of mankind are, more or less, resolvable into the prolonged 
action of external and other agents producing or perpetuating 
them. Within two centuries, the population of a district in 
Ireland has, under barbarizing influences, changed the elliptical 
form of skull for the prognathous. On the other hand, the 
pyramidal type of the Mongolian group of nations has, in the 
instance of the Western Turks, for example, assumed the ellip- 
tical conformation of skull. The color of the eyes and of the 
skin is found to be so dependent on external conditions as 
to render it useless as a characteristic mark of some races. 
The Jew of Germany, of Portugal, and of Cochin, is so far 
assimilated to the native populations of these countries as to 
be light-complexioned in the first, dark-colored in the second, 
and black in the third. It is freely admitted, indeed, that cli- 
mate does not account for ^11 the varieties of color; but 
neither will diversity of original stock account for them. Very 
marked differences of color exist among the same nation : 
even within the limits of a small island. Peculiarities of com- 
plexion often appear in the children of the same parents. 
Sometimes all the offspring of five-fingered parents are six- 
fingered; and circumstances are easily conceivable in which 
this distinction might be perpetuated. Thus far, then, we have 
met with no race exhibiting a single distinctive characteristic 
common to all its members and peculiar to them, nor one so 
constant as not to be susceptible of change in the course of 
time ; leaving it to be inferred that the varieties observable are 
not original, but within the limits of species. 

30. It may be objected that the kinds of evidence already 
adduced only make it probable that the varieties of mankind 
may have descended from a single stock, or from similar stocks. 
This is true, but this is all which can be reasonably looked 
for. And a wise philosophy will neither reject negative evidence, 
where positive cannot be justly expected, nor assume a plurahty 
of causes, where one is sufficient to account for the phenomena. 
Comparative Philology, however, — or, as appHed to the science 
of races, " Glottology," — tends, as far as its researches have 



28 MAX. 

hitherto gone, to affirm positively the unity of the human race. 
In proportion as a careful inquiry has penetrated into the past, 
the streams of speech have been traced upwards to their points 
of divergence from their parent channels ; and many of these 
channels themselves have been found to converge and to unite 
in a common source. Thus, first, the languages of the great 
Indo-European family of nations are proved to have been 
developed from a common Sanscritic or earlier origin. The 
second or Semitic family, called, also, the Syro- Arabian, com- 
prising the Hebrew, the Ai-amaic, the Arabic, and the Etliiopic, 
are traceable to a^common origin also. But these two famihes 
are themselves allied by the most unquestionable analogies. 
The Egyptian language was long supposed to stand apart from 
both famihes. Not only, however, were the same social, poht- 
ical, and speculative characteristics, in theu' broad outline, 
common to the Egyptians and Indians, but the language of each 
is now found to be linked together by mysterious affinities. 
" The old Egyptian clearly stands between the Semitic and 
Indo-European ; for its forms and roots cannot be explained 
by either of them singly, but are evidently a combination of the 
two."* The thu'd family, the Turanian, or Ugro-Tartarian, 
comprises the languages of High Asia and of parts of Northern 
Europe. To tliis branch belongs, also, by numerous structural 
relations, the whole American family, as well as the Papuan 
and Folynesian languages. And yet so striking are the vestiges 
of original connection between the Turanian and the Indo- 
European families, that it has even been proposed to include 
them both under the wider designation of the Japhetic ? f The 
monosyllabic Chinese and Indo-Chinese form a fourth family 
of languages. But even this strongly marked group is not 
isolated : for to say nothing of the grammatical affimities between 
the Chinese and Burmese languages ; J the Tibetan language is, 
" in some respects intermediate between the monosyllabic lan- 
guages in geiieral and the Mongolian," which is one of the 
Turanian group. § A fifth group, the languages of the great 
region of Central Negroland, forms the last Glottological divis- 

* Tlie Chevalier Bunsen's " Egypt's Place in Universal History," p. x. 
t The Chevalier Bunsen's " Results of the recent Egyptian Researches,'* 
&c., in the Report of Brit. Assoc., 1847, p. 297. 
J Idem, p. 264. 

§ Dr. Prichard " On the various Methods of Research," &c., in the 
same Report, p. 247. 



THE PAST BROUGHT FORWAKD. 29 

ion ; and not only is there ^^ prima facie evidence for believing 
that the phenomenon of philological isolation is not to be found 
in Africii," * but alRnities exist which place this family in rela- 
tion to the Semitic group. 

31. Now the fact that formative words and inflections pervade 
the entire structure of some of these great families of languages, 
renders almost every sentence a witness to the common origin 
of the nations speaking them. But when it is remembered 
that, according to the laws of combination, millions of chances 
lie against the application of a few similar unexceptionable 
words in different languages to the same objects,! we may be 
said to possess mathematical evidence of the common origin of 
all languages, and consequently of the original unity of man- 
kind. And thus it is that in human language itself there is 
more to be read than in anything that has been ^^^:itten in it. 

32. The descent of mankind from a single stock is further 
supported by Analogy. It is the generally received doctrine of 
naturalists that every species of animals had only one beginning 
in a particular spot ; their progeny being left to disperse them- 
selves as far from that spot as their powers of locomotion, 
climatic adaptations, and other conditions would permit. But 
if this hypothesis be accepted respecting the brute creation, the 
improbability that there was a plurality of ancestral stocks 
created for man is as much greater as his powers of locomotion, 
of adaptation, and his inventive resources, exceed those of the 
brute creation. And, further, it may be shown that there are 
no physical diversities of color, shape, and conformation, found 
among the different branches of the human family, which have 
not their parallel in the varieties of many an animal species ; 
leaving it to be infeiTed that they are resolvable into deviations 
from one stock. 

33. The objection, that if the hypothesis of descent from a 
single stock be accepted, a much longer time is necessary in 
order to account for the diversities among mankind than our 
received clu-onology would allow, inasmuch as some of them 
are found already stereotyped at the very commencement of 
historic time, belongs, properly, to the department of chronol- 
ogy. We may remark, however, in abatement of the objection, 
first, that although paintings coeval with the earliest records 

* Dr. Latham, " On Ethnographical Philology," in the same Report, 
pp. 223, 229. 
t Dr. Young, in Philosoph. Trans., vol. cix. for 1819, p. 70. 
5* 



30 MAN. 

exhibit tlie red Egyptian in contrast vdth. the jet-black Negro, 
tribes are to be found on the borders of the Red Sea constituting 
a series of hnks between the two, and therefore pointing to a 
common origin. Secondly, that regarding the Negro, for exam- 
ple, as a wide departure from the type of primitive man, it 
appears to be a law of human nature that deterioration should 
take place much more rapidly than restoration or improvement. 
And, thirdly, that supposing deterioration, or spontaneous varia- 
tion of any kind, to have taken place, the necessary condition 
of mankind at first would have peculiarly tended to its perpetu- 
ation. 

34. Besides, if the hypothesis of a common origin be rejected, 
the nature of the only alternative should be distinctly borne in 
mind — an unknown number of separate stocks. Five or five 
hundred will not suffice. For if the extreme or typical forms 
of mankind are to be each assigned a distinct origin, why is not 
every link of the series by which they are connected together 
to receive a similar distinction ? They can be placed in regular 
gradation ; and if any one in the line be merely a variation 
from the one standing next, why may not this also be a modifi- 
cation from the next in the series ? 

35. It might be shown also that, of the different kinds of evi- 
dence implying unity of descent, one branch is strongest where 
another is weakest. Nations most linguistically remote have 
never had their physical relationship questioned. Others are 
closely bound by hnguistic ties, though widely sundered phy- 
sically and geographically. All the branches of evidence appro- 
priate to the inquiry support each other, and unite in authenti- 
cating the conclusion that the human species is one, and that all 
the differences which it exhibits are to be regarded merely as 
varieties. 

36. Third. Like the animal kingdom which preceded him, 
man is endowed with animal instincts ; and, as in animals, all 
these instincts determine him to act for the attainment of that 
end which is relative, but only relative, to the great End — his 
ovra animal well-being. Wliatever higher purposes they may 
be applied to by the nobler parts of man's nature, the direct 
objects of all his animal instincts ai'e life, enjoyment, and con- 
tinuance by offspring. The existence of many of these is 
recognized in the terms of the original grant of the earth for 
man's use. " And God blessed them, and God said unto them, 
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue 
it ; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the 



THE PAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 81' 

fowl of the air, and over every living thing that movetli upon 
the earth." Here the gregarious instinct becomes, under the 
influence of reason, a social principle. So many processes, 
and so great a variety of labor, are implied m the accomplish- 
ment of tliis destiny, that not only is a division of labor, or a 
community of eifort, desirable, but the continuance of such social 
compact is indispensable through a long period of time. 

37. In all these respects, then, the laws of nature, as known 
to the jmcient eaith, were now introduced and embodied in the 
constitution of the new-made man. So completely is a portion, 
at lea.^t, of tlie pre-existing creation taken up into man's nature, 
that any change in external nature, unless accompanied by a 
corresponding change in his constitution, will be detrimental to^ 
his well-being. And any essential change in him which is not 
accompanied by a corresponding alteration in the laws of exter- 
nal nature, will, by throwing him out of his constitutional har- 
mony with nature, be equally detriniental to his physical, 
organic, and animal -well-being. Had man been the first object 
created, and had he been held miraculously in space till the 
earth wo^ made, God, by giving him his present constitution, 
would have given a pledge that the material globe to be created 
as his habitation should harmonijze with it. On the other hand, 
as the earth was created first, a pledge was given in effect that 
the constitution of man should be in - exact correspondence with 
all its laws. And the closer the examination into this coinci- 
dence, which w^e may hereafter have occasion to institute, the 
more shall we be impressed by its minuteness, comprehensive- 
ness, and perfection. And thus man's constitution, regarded in 
its threefold character, as physical, organic, and sentient, took 
up the strain of creation w^hicli had preceded his coming, in 
praise of the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God. 

38. Thus far w^e have only verified the truth of the Scriptural 
declaration concerning man, "that his foundation is in the 
dust," for we have merely unearthed and looked at that foun- 
dation. The towering and temple-like superstructure is yet to 
engage our attention. But could we have lo^ed on that foun- 
dation, even before it began to be built on, and to receive its 
mysterious additions, and could w^e have taken a comprehen- 
sive survey of the preparations and purposes which it impUed, 
how profound the emotions wdiich must have filled our breasts ! 
To receive the foundations of a temple, the ground has often 
to be prepared — or, as it is technically called, to be rrmde — at 
an immense expenditure of time and labor ; but here is a basis 



S2 MAK. 

laid, for which " the foundations of the eai'th " themselves liad 
been laid — for which the earth itself had been, literally, mjide. 
Nations have quarrelled for the mere sketches and outhnes of 
the human figure by some of the masters of design : the veiy 
fragments of the marble block from which one of the master- 
pieces of ancient sculpture was hewn, would be deemed a 
treasure for royalty ; but here is the Divine model of all their 
copies — the original of human beauty — fresh from the hand 
of the infinite Designer. " The dust of antiquity," when it does 
not cover what ought to be exposed, imparts sacredness and 
value to the objects on which it rests; here dust of dateless 
antiquity, after havmg passed through numberless combinations, 
is taken and moulded into a human foim. Some of the mem- 
bers of that form haxLbeen in the scheme of animal organization 
unknown ages before the earth was prepared for man or suited 
to his constitution ; possibly, the earth of which they are moulded 
has been already in all their animal types ; but in his form they 
have at length attained a development which, guided by reason, 
will make him the sovereign of the animal kingdom. And even 
earher still, before time began, there was " a book " — an eternal 
plan — in which " all his members were sketched, when as yet 
there was none of them." And how greatly would it have 
added to the interest of the spectacle could we have imagined 
all the relations of that new-made organization to the physical 
elements which encompassed it; or have foreseen that when 
that Pharos, prostrate on the earth, should be erected, and 
lighted up ^vith an inteUigence within, it would stand, the centre 
of the material universe, with lines of relationship drawn to it 
from every pai't of the vast circumference. What, then, must 
our emotions have been, could we have looked on that frame, 
so " fearfully and wonderfully made," with a prophetic eye, and 
have caught a ghmpse of its subsequent history ! 



39. The tenor of this chapter appears to assume, first, that, 
in the ascending order of creation, the origination of matter 
preceded that of mind, and mere animal life that of angehc 
existence ; and, secondly, that man's creation subsequent to 
that of angels implies his superiority of constitution and ulti- 
mate destination. Each of these imphcations I believe to be 
clearly deducible from the word of God. As, however, the pro- 
cess of the deduction would interfere with the continuity of 
Dur remarks respecting man, besides anticipating portions of the 



THE PAST BROUGHT FORWARD. 33 

later revelations of God, I will liere content myself with two 
observations — first, that tlie disproof and rejection of both 
these propositions respecting angels might still leave the truth 
of om- theory respecting our planetary and human economy 
untouched. For aught that the rejector could show to the con- 
trary, then- history may furnish more striking illusti'ations of 
our theory than that of our earthly economy does. Unless he 
were in a condition to say what the " fii-st estate " was from 
which some of the angels fell ; where they passed that proba- 
tionaiy state ; and in Avhat respects their physiological constitu- 
tion differed from oui^, he has no premises from which to draw 
a single conclusion advei-se to our views. Secondly, he is not at 
liberty to argue from their condition at this moment to our pres- 
ent condition. This (the common error) is a gross theological 
anachronism. In respect of mere time, they are a stage of 
existence beyond us. They are already in their future state ; 
what their j^reliminary or probationary history was, we know 
not. They may have reached their present condition from a 
pai't of the Divine dominions in which Power and Wisdom and 
Goodness had for unknown ages been conducting a process of 
manifestation parallel to that of eaith, and in w^hich everything 
was in strict analogy with, and preparatory to, the subsequent 
arrival of their own economy as a display of Hohness. The 
angelic and terrestrial economies may thus have proceeded mde- 
pendently and separately through successive stages, and for 
ages of duration, and yet they may have been all the time illus- 
trating the same Divine perfections, till, at a certain point, they 
touched and coincided. All that an objector would be justified 
in demandhig is, that when they do meet they should not clash ; 
that the order of the progress of each should be the order of 
the DiA-ine perfections ; that, like two streams, which, having 
run for leagues separately but in the same direction, at length 
imite their course, and ever after flow on together ; and this 
condition the Scripture itself abundantly satisfies. 



34 MAN. 



CHAPTER ni. 

PROGRESSION. 

Sect. I. — Sensation and Perception. 

1. In our last chapter, we regarded man as a mere link in 
tlie connected chain of the Divine Manifestation. The same 
theory wliich led us to look for the reproduction of pre-existing 
laws and elements in his constitution, leads us to inquire next 
for the production of new effects, or the introduction of new laws. 
This itself is, hypothetically, a law of the Divine Procedure. 

2. For were it to terminate at any given point, the proof of 
all-sufficiency for unhmited manifestation would terminate with 
it. Besides which, all-sufficiency, which is tlie perfection to be 
displayed, requires, from its very nature, infinity and eternity 
in wliich to be developed, for it impKes sufficiency for nothing 
less than these. But, if the development of the ultimate Pur- 
pose, or the attainment of the great End, be in its very nature 
progressive, this is only saying that the process must ever be 
kept open to receive the addition of new effects, or the superin- 
duction of new laws. So that the law of uniformity itself wiU 
always be subject to, or bounded by, this more general law of 
Progression ; just as this more general law itself will always be 
subject to the law of the end, to which all particular laws owe 
their existence. That, therefore, which is commonly regarded 
as miraculous interposition, may be itself a law of the Manifes- 
tation — not the exception, but the rule — or, if the exception 
to us who view things only on the scale of a few days, to Him 
who views them on an unlimited scale it may be the rule. 

3. Now, in harmony with the law of progression, we have 
found a newly created man. A short period prior to the point 
of time of which we are speaking, he was not. Animal exist- 
ence was supreme. A higher order of being has now come. 
A moment's consideration will show that we have now reached 
a new and vital point in our inquiries. Hitherto, we have con- 
templated nature as a manifestation of the Deity ; and, in the 
precedmg chapter, we regarded man merely as a newly added 
link in the connected chain of nature. Now, we have to view 
him as the being to whom the manifestation is mo,de ; and as 
Buch, capable of turning round and examining the chain, hnk by 



PROGRESSION. 35 

link, for himself. Hitherto, but two objects hare engaged our 
attention — God, and the created nature intended to manifest 
Him ; but now a third party comes on the stage — the Human 
being to whom that pre-existing Nature is to serve as a mani- 
festixtion of God. We have now therefore a new, and in some 
respects, a very different object, with which to deal. Not, 
indeed, that this new being himself will be less a manifestation 
of God, because he is the first to be occupied in the new work 
of recognizing God in creation. On the contrary, from the 
moment he enters on his new task, and by the very endow- 
ments which enable him to undertake it, he himself will be a 
nobler exponent of the perfections of his Maker than any part 
of external nature which can engage his attention. But, in the 
order of nature, this part of the subject, or man regarded as 
forming a part of the Divine manifestation, must be deferred 
untU Ave have examined into the nature ot that intellectual and 
moral constitution by which he is made capable of recognizing 
God in His works. In other words, the manifestation of God 
by man, requires that we first examine how the manifestation 
of God to man is made possible. Hitherto, there has been but 
one free mind related to this terrestrial economy — the Infinite 
Mind which conceived the whole as a Hmited representation of 
Himself; but now another mind has come expressly in order to 
understand and admire this representation. Here are now two 
Subjectives and one Objective ; the Infinite Subjective proposing 
to reveal himself, the finite subjective prepared to receive the 
revelation, and objective nature placed, so to speak, between the 
two as the occasion or medium of communication ; and with 
this peculiarity of arrangement, that the finite subjective itself 
is embodied, or is constitutionally allied to external nature. 

4. Now it must be evident that, in order that objective nature 
may answer the purpose in question, the two subjective minds 
must have many things in common. To the infinite mind, that 
objective was first subjective, existing only in His divine pur- 
pose ; to the finite mind it is first objective, existing apart, and 
awaiting his arrival. If, then, it is to be the means of making 
the same truths consciously present in the finite mind which 
were once entirely subjective in the mind of God, it is clear 
that the two minds must have much in common with each 
other ; that man must, in this lofty sense, be made in the image 
of God — the intellectual finite be the refiection of the infinite 
— otherwise the objective universe would stand, not as a me- 
dium of communication, but as a barrier of obstruction, between 



3b MAN. 

the teacher and the taught. If, as we believe, there wa^ a 
point in past duration when creation had yet to be, when all the 
objects in nature existed in the Divine mind only as ideas ; if 
everything in nature exists only in conformity with those ideas, 
or as objective expressions of their laws ; and if man, though 
embodied and sentient, is to know them as such, he must be 
made capable of knowing material objects as the occasion of his 
sensations, of understanding the laws under which they operate 
and exist; and of being conscious of the ideas which these 
embodied laws symboHze and suggest. 

5. First of all, then, it seems necessary that, if the physical, 
organic, and animal world be, in all its varieties, a manifestation 
of God, and man, though partaking of a material nature, is to 
know it as such, he should be placed in sensible and perceptible 
communication with it ; or be endowed with means of sensation 
and perception, rendering him susceptible of a sensible change 
or mental impression, consciously and uniformly answering to 
each, or else capable of being made to answer to each, of all 
the phenomena of external nature. 

6. In order that objective nature may be subjectively felt, it 
appears necessary, in accordance with the terms of this propo- 
sition, (a) that the means or organs of sensation be susceptible 
of a change of state corresponding to the phenomena presented 
to them.* (b) That the seat of the sensation be, not in the 
material organs, but in the mind, and the mind alone, (c) That 
the sensation, being an effect, be referable by the mind to a 
cause or occasion, (d) That the sensation be attended by the 
behef of something external as the cause or occasion of it. 
(e) That this reference of the mind to an external agent involve 
the beUef of distinction or difference between the subjective 
and the objective, {f) That the sensation be referable, not 
merely to some occasion external as its origin, but to the right 
occasion. 

7. [g) That the perception of the right external occasion of 
sensation be phenomenal, or such as it appears Avhen kno^vn 
through an organic medium. Now that which perception 
directly assures us of are the phenomena wliich we term attri- 
butes and quahties. The popular notion is, indeed, that there 
is something in the external agents which act on the senses 



* "Bell's Nervous System of the Human Body," p. 114, &c.; and 
" Barlow's Connection between Physiology and Intellectual Philosophy," 
pp. 6 — 11. 



PROGRESSION. 37 

similar to the sensations tliey produce ; that our sensible impres- 
sions are exact copies of objective reahties ; that the quality 
of sweetness is in the honey, and of fragrance in the rose. But 
flavor, fragrance, and color, are not mherent in the bodies 
which excite these sensations, any more than pain resides in 
the instrument which wounds us. That there are aptitudes or 
quahties in the bodies to produce these sensations is unques- 
tionable, otherwise Ave should not be conscious of them. But 
these qualities themselves are knoAvn to us only as the external 
occasions of our sensations. In other words, they have no ex- 
istence, such as we sensibly apprehend, apart from, and inde- 
pendently of, the sensations which they occasion. Now this is 
to know what are called the secondary qualities of matter, and 
answers to the condition which I have just named, and which is 
to be regarded as a necessary means of knowledge. For if the 
human mmd itself is to be a manifestation of the Divine mind, 
it must be true to every material object. The subjective mir- 
ror must not distort, any more than the objective universe must 
deceive. 

8. But is this the limit of our knowledge of matter ? To 
speak of its secondary qualities is to imply the existence, real 
or uuaginary, of primary qualities. And such properties there 
are, (though I can speak of them here only by anticipation,) — 
properties essential to matter, and without which the mind cannot 
conceive it to exist. Secondary qualities have just been 
described as those which have no existence suxih as we sensibly 
apprehend, independently of the sensations which they occa- 
sion ; the primary qualities of matter may be described as those 
which would have existed, even if no sentient being had ever 
been created — such as form and extension. Of these we have 
notions or ideas, not sensations. They are to be confounded 
neither with the mind which conceives of them, nor with the 
sensations which precede them. They are as real for the 
reason as any mere sensible phenomena are for the senses, and 
much more objectively distinct. All such phenomena pre-sup- 
pose them, and are dependent on them. They are no sooner 
experienced to exist, than their existence is seen by the mind 
to be necessary. The mind neither produces them nor are they 
merely the objects of its sensational perceptions ; * but in such 

* As percej>tion is often used to denote the reference which the mind 
makes to its own phenomena, through the medium of consciousness, I 
here employ the plirase sensational perception to denote the same faculty 



38 MAN. 

perceptions it intuitively recognizes tiieir independent and 
necessary existence as conditions under which matter existed 
before we came into being, and, indeed, irrespective of all cre- 
ated minds. 

9. These remarks on tlie primary qualities of matter are, 
however, anticipatory. But as some notice of the subject at 
this pomt appeared necessary, in order to prevent misapprehen- 
sion, I might here state the result as another condition of human 
knowledge — (h) that the intellectual apprehension of the right 
object in perception, includes, as far as it goes, the knowledge 
of the object as it really is in itself For if external nature is 
necessarily, as far as it goes, a manifestation of God, and if man 
is made in order to apprehend this Divine disclosure, his intel- 
lectual apprehension of the objective, as far as it extends, (for 
it cannot be absolutely unhmited, and therefore I employ the 
term apprehension, not comprehension,) must be a knowledge of 
it as it really is, or as it would have been had he never existed 
to apprehend it ; otherwise, he will either apprehend a fiction, 
or an objective reality will exist as a means of Divine manifes- 
tation, of which he yet knows nothing. 

10. Now, if these views are accepted, our theory, if I mistake 
not, reveals the reason of the distinction in question ; for it 
contemplates man in a twofold light, as part of a system of 
Divine revelation, and also as the being tc whom the revelation 
is to be made. In the former capacity, his mind primarily, like 
that of the animal below him, has to do only with the secondary 
qualities of matter ; in the latter, as standing apart from the 
system, and viewing it as a disclosure made to him, his mind, 
like that of the Divine Discloser, must be capable of appre- 
hending primary qualities. As a part of nature, he has to do 
only with the phenomena of nature — with things as they seem ; 
but if, as a reflective, subjective mind, he is to know these in 
their highest or scientific forms, he must be able to conceive of 
them in their primary conditions. As a mere epitome of cre- 
ated nature — a microcosm — he must know nature through a 
sensible medium, so that his knowledge will necessarily be rela- 
tive, even in its kind; but, as an epitome, or reflection of the 
Divine Mind, his mind must be able to apprehend nature in its 
primary characters, as his Maker does, so that its knowledge 
may be relative only in degree. Relative to the constitution of 

in its reference to the objects of external nature, through the medium of 
the senses. 



PROGRESSION. 39 

his mind it must be ; but while, in the former case, it is relative 
both in kind and in degree, in the latter it is relative in degree 
only. In its higher capacity, as an image of the Divine Mind, 
the human intellect regards the primary qualities both as occa- 
sions of perceptions, and as objects^ or as purely objective ; in its 
lower capacity, as an image of nature, the secondary quaHties 
are related to it only as occasions of perception. The primary 
quaHties of matter are to be regarded as presupposed even by 
the Di\dne Creator in all the uses for which he may be pleased 
to employ it, and therefore the mind of man is constituted to 
regard them as objective realities ; the secondary qualities are 
not, strictly speaking, objects which the mind perceives as they 
really are, but only the external agents or occasions of its per- 
ceptions. And thus our theory not only recognizes an im- 
portant distinction which exists in almost every enlightened 
system of mental philosophy since the time of Locke, but even 
requires it; or, at least, assigns an important reason for its 
existence. 

11. (i) That, in sensational perception, our knowledge of 
external things be, not representational, but immediate and 
direct ; otherwise we should be shut up to the knowledge of our 
own mental states, and be destitute of the means of authenti- 
cating our conviction of a material universe. 

12. Every contrary theory, indeed — the Peripatetic doc- 
trine, that we obtain the knowledge of material things by shad- 
owy films, or immaterial species, bearing an exact resemblance 
to the external object ; the Epicurean notion, that we obtain 
such knowledge by exquisitely refined but yet material efilux- 
ions from them ; the Cartesian idea of a modification of the 
mind itself by the Deity ; the intervening idea of Malebranche ; 
and Hartley's vibrations, — all proceed, either on the assumed 
axiom that notliing can act where it is not, and had for their 
aim, therefore, to annihilate the distance between the object and 
the percipient mind ; or else, on the unfounded persuasion, that 
things which, like matter and mind, are not homogeneous, 
cannot act on each other ; and therefore they essayed to devise 
a subtle subhmated medium between them, or invoked imme- 
diate Divine agency. But every representational theory, besides 
utterly failing of its aim, (for if the intervening representation 
be after all material, the question still recurs — how can it affect 
the mind? — if spiritual, how can it be sensible to matter?) 
actually involves the subject in a difficulty of the first magni- 
tude. For if that which we know of the external world consist 



40 MAN. 

only of images, or pliantasmal representations of it, we can 
liave no certainty that an external world exists, inasmuch as 
these representations of it are not the reality itself, and, accord- 
ing to the hypothesis, we are cut oif from the possibility of veri- 
fying the accuracy of the image, by a comparison of it with the 
"reahty. 

13. The same result follows if we regard consciousness as a 
distinct faculty of the mind, co-ordmate with perception ; for if, 
in addition to the perception of an object, a distinct power is 
necessary to make me conscious of the perception, I am only 
conscious after all of a subjective state ; the objective reality is 
beyond the reach of my consciousness, and its existence inca- 
pable of proof. Or if, with Brown, it is concluded that of ex- 
ternal objects, the mind perceives only the sensations, or the 
states wliich they occasion, it still follows that we are shut out 
from the knowledge and proof of everything extra-mental. For 
even if it be affirmed in reply, that those mental states of which 
we are conscious are the exact counterparts or resemblances of 
external realities, Fichte and the idealists are justified in de- 
manding proof of the supposed resemblance, and as such proof 
would require the power of instituting a comparison between 
the subjective copy and the objective original, (the very power 
which the theory abandons) the proof is impossible. Accord- 
ingly, it was from such representationalist views that Berkeley 
inferred the non-existence of a material world, alleging the 
impossibility of our proving that our sensations are occasioned 
by material objects. And from this conclusion again, Hume 
proceeded to infer that as sensations and ideas are the only 
things of which we are conscious, we are no more justified in 
affirming the existence of a substance called mind, than we are 
that of matter ; that all we can say is, that we are the subjects 
of impressions and ideas, but that of their validity we know 
nothing. And such appears to be the legitimate deduction of 
every representationalist theory of human knowledge. 

14. Kow, in" opposition to all such theories, the universal, 
ineradicable, and intuitive conviction of mankind is, that they 
perceive the object itself wliich is before them, and not a more 
subjective image or mental representation of it. In perception 
there exist only a percipient and a perceived — of any connect- 
ing medium we are totally unconscious — and perception itself 
is the relation of the two, or the mind's direct cognition of the 
objective. The great service which Reid rendered to the phi- 
losophy of mind, consisted in his calling attention to this fact, 



rROGRESSION. 41 

in appealing to the ultimate principles on wliicli it rests, and in 
showing the utter absurdity of calling these prmciples in ques- 
tion. He showed, for example, that in a sensational percep- 
tion there is present not merely the consciousness of a phe- 
nomenon, but also the judgment of a real objective existence, 
and that such judgments are involved in the very constitution 
of the human mind. And whether, with Reid, we call them 
principles of common sense ; or, with Hutcheson, metaphysical 
axioms connate with the mind ; or, with Kant, forms of the 
understanding; or, with Brown, principles of intuitive behef — 
we shall find that they cannot be rejected without making rea- 
soning itself impossible. We should err indeed in representing 
perception as a simple and independent judgment or act of 
mind in making itself acquainted with external phenomena — 
independent, that is, of the external phenomena as the exciting 
occasion of the judgment ; for then it night be stilb objected 
that, for aught we know, the mind might, by a previous act, 
have originated the phenomena perceived, and we should con- 
sequently be cut off from all certain communication with the 
objective. We have seen, however, that perception contains 
an objective element ; that it is a sensational reaction, being 
called into exercise from without, and that in every perception, 
the objective is as really present as the subjective. A sensa- 
tional perception is not the object of my knowledge — it is my 
knowledge itself. It cannot be analyzed into an act and the 
consciousness of that act ; the act itself exists only as we are 
conscious of it. I do not know the external world through the 
medium of such perceptions ; they themselves are my knowl- 
edge. Abstract the knowledge, and no perceptions are left, 
I am conscious of self, and I am conscious of not-self ; and this 
consciousness of both, in perception, is my knowledge, direct 
and immediate. " Consciousness declares our knowledge of 
material qualities to be intuitive. Nor is the fact, as given, 
denied even by those who disallow its truth." * And if such be 
the consciousness of mankind, the truth of the view cannot be 
questioned without involving every other fact of consciousness 
in doubt, and, with it, the validity of all human knowledge. 

15. (j) That these conditions of sensational perception, or of 
the relation between the subjective and the objective, be charac- 

* See, on the " Philosophy of Perception," an article in the Edin. Eev., 
No. 103, which, for acuteness, comprehensiveness, and erudition, is a 
model of philosophical criticism. 

4* 



42 MAN. 

terized by uniformity and constancy ; for otherwise both knowl- 
edge and its communication would be impossible. Accordingly, 
the senses are themselves organic paints of external nature, and, 
as such, partake of its stability. Our " confidence in the stabihty 
of nature " is unquestioned and universal. The uniformity of 
the subjective, therefore, is implied in this confidence in the 
stability of the objective, for it is through the former alone that 
the latter is verified. 

16. Now, if external nature is to be a manifestation of God, 
and if man is to know it as such, the conditions enumerated 
appear to be essential to his knowledge. In the generation of 
knowledge, the first step of the intellectual process, in the order 
of time, is, undoubtedly, sensation. But then it is only the first 
step, though without it the second could not be taken ; for in 
sensational perception, along with the sensation is given the 
instant behef of an external reality, and in this inseparable 
union of self and nature the mind finds its knowledge. In 
speaking of perception, however, we have been logically pre- 
supposing many of the subjective conditions of knowledge, all 
of which, as we shall hereafter show, are necessarily implied 
from the first as the very conditions of experience. 

17. With these primary means of knowledge, then, though 
not with these alone, the first man awoke to fife in Eden. The 
fragrance which nature presented as incense to her new sove- 
reign, and which he inhaled with his first breath, the melody 
which welcomed his awakening ear, and the many-colored glo- 
ries which courted his opening eye, were probably the occa- 
sions that first quickened his new-made mind into a state of 
activity, which continue still and will never cease. The sensa- 
tions of that first hour, of even the fii'st moment — the sight, the 
perfume, the touch of a flower — might, had he quitted the earth 
with those sensations alone, have furnished his mind with an 
occasion for unending thought. As effects, did they not say to 
him " there is a cause, a First cause, a self-existent and eternal 
Creator." As a complex mental change, of which he perceived 
the cause was not in himself, did it not say to him " there is a 
world without ■ — a world from which you are distinct, and yet to 
which you are mysteriously related." What an inexhaustible 
store of materials for thought, then, must he have accumulated 
by the evening of the first day, when every moment was crowd- 
ing his mind with new sensations ! Truly, there is a language 
earlier than that of words ; and in that language nature begins 
to speak to man from the first moment of his existence. By 



rKOGRF.SSION. 43 

the wise and wonderful arrangement of light and colors, of 
tastes and odors, one object instructs him on the subject of 
forms, another on magnitude, and another on distances; one 
object says to him, " I am to be chosen ; " and another, " I am 
to be avoided ; I am related to you, and yet different and dis- 
tinct from you ; I am destined to serve you as long as you ob- 
serve a certain law ; violate that, and you become my victim." 
What an incalculable sum of subjects for reflection, then, does 
every man take away with him Avhen he quits the visible world 
for the invisible ! How few consider that among these are 
included the materials of inconceivable regret for a paradise 
lost, or of eternal joy on account of a paradise regained ! 



Sect. II. — Rejhction and Understanding. 

1. If all the phenomena of the external world are variously 
related in and among themselves — if they sustained these rela- 
tions prior to the creation of man, or have an objective reality 
— and if these relations display a portion of that Divine Per- 
fection which man is to appreciate, he must be able to trace 
and to apprehend them. 

2. In the last section, we regarded sensational perception as 
giving us the knowledge of separate material phenomena, or 
individual objective facts, though we remarked that even these 
perceptions of material objects logically presupposed certain 
subjective conditions, such as the ideas of self, of personal 
identity, of Ci^usation, and others, as essential to all intelligent 
experience. But, in addition to the power of observing insu- 
lated objects, and which alone could be only, at best, the means 
of very limited knowledge, we are endowed with the power of 
observing relations among phenomena, which enables us so to 
classify individual facts under their proper conception, still 
further to generalize these conceptions, and so to arrange the 
whole, as indefinitely to enlarge the sphere of our knowledge, 
and, at the same time, to retain every such addition. But 
where do these relations exist ? in the subjective, in the ob- 
jective, or in both ? What are the forms or laws of the mind 
in thinking ? and what the modes of its pursuit after truth ? 

3. As to the first inquiry, w^e may seek for the laws or rela-- 
tions in question either by making a classification of all sur- 
rounding things as the objects of our feelings and thoughts ; in 
which case the leading characteristics or principles of the clas- 



44 MAN. 

sificatioii \^'Ollld give us the required laws ; or else, observing 
the processes of our own minds, and marking the general laws 
which regulate them, we may regard these as giving form to all 
the variety of our mental phenomena. Aristotle pursued the 
former or objective method — classifying things as understood ; 
Kant pursued the latter or subjective method — analyzing the 
mind as understanding. Our historical or chronological method 
embraces both ; for, regarding time as an independent reality, 
it views everything objective as having a place in it, and requir- 
ing examination — both the phenomena of matter and the 
phenomena of mind. Accordingly, some of the laws or rela- 
tions of external phenomena, viewed as the matter of our 
thoughts, were noticed in the preceding volume. These very 
relations, however, are relations of which the mind is conscious. 
Our investigation of these, as known to consciousness, may 
bring to light others for which no material phenomena will 
account. Besides which, as the phenomena of the mind are 
open to inspection, as we are conscious of them, that is, in 
such a manner as that we can observe them, they are them- 
selves objective, and, like the material objective, in relation to 
which they are additional and distinct, they demand distinct 
examination. 

Here, then, we find ourselves in a new region of inquiry, and 
dealing with a new element of knowledge. We are not now 
exclusively in the external world, examining how matter ope- 
rates on matter. Nor are we merely, as in the last section, 
standing on the line which unites matter and mind, and marking 
the combined result of the laws of both. We are now, in addi- 
tion, to enter within the mind, and to mark how it acts by and 
on itself, as subject and object, percipient and perceived ; what 
becomes of its sensations, what accompanies or follows its per- 
ceptions. 

4. Our second inquiry relates to the forms or laws of the 
mind in thinking. Locke regarded the truth of our notion 
respecting anything as depending on the conformity of our idea 
of it with the outward reality ; Kant, on the contrary, made it 
to depend on the validity of the understanding itself, from whose 
constructive laws the outward object receives its form. Now, 
we beheve, in harmony vs^ith the former, that the mind, Avhen it 
classifies external objects truly, does not create the classifica- 
tion — the arrangement existed before man came, — he only 
reads and understands it. But then the power of reading and 
interpreting the laws of the classification aright, indicates tKe 



PROGRESSION. 45 

existence of independeni laws in his own mind. And, in accord- 
ance with the latter, we beheve that the operations of the under- 
standing develope laws which external nature only awakens ; 
but then the very office of awakening them imphes that nature 
has forms of its own corresponding to the laws — meaning by 
form, that part of an object through which it ranks under a law ; 
that its laws are not created or imposed, but only recognized 
by the mind. " Every power exerts its agency under some laws 
— that is, in the language of Kant, by certain forms." The 
manifestations of Creative power are expressed in the laws of 
nature ; and, for the same reason, it might have been antici- 
v<ated of the human mind, that the power of God, in its creation, 
would be regulated by laws also. But we are now speaking of 
the mind, not as a manifestation of Creative power, but as the 
intelligent power to whom the manifestation is made. As 
a power, therefore, its movements and manifestations are all 
according to law — thus reflecting the legislative power of its 
Maimer. What, then, are the laws which its activity evolves ? 
In speaking of these, it will be perceived that constant refer- 
ence is made to those primary ideas or beliefs of the reason, the 
investigation of which belongs to the next section. As being 
presupposed by the understanding, however, and as regulating 
its activity, they are necessaiily introduced, in a general man- 
ner, here. 

5. Treating the subject in the order of nature in the Divine 
manifestation — an order therefore already prescribed to us — 
we commence with body and motion. We cannot think of 
body but as in sj^ace. Every body is somewhere, for space is 
its place. Every body has extension, and occupies space ; has 
figure, and measures it; has parts, and co-exists in it. Of 
space without body we can conceive, but not of body without 
^pace. Again, we cannot think of the motion of body, or of 
events or changes of any kind, except as occurring in time. 
Every event is viewed by us as before or after; as a first, 
or second, or third, and so on. Were it not for this law, every 
event would be to us a first event ; it would want even the 
character of being first, because for us there would be no 
second. The relation of successiveness in the world without, 
has its correlate within in the memory. "Men derive their 
ideas of duration," says Locke, " from their reflection on the 
trains of the ideas they observe to succeed one another in their 
own understandings." But when our consciousness has given 
us this apprehension of successiveness, there is involved in it 



46 MAN. 

the judgment that this succession ta]^es place in a determinate 
time. We can conceive of the non-existence of tlie succession, 
but not of the time in which it has taken place. Events, then, 
inhabit time, as bodies occupy space. The continuity of space 
renders the co-existence of bodies possible ; the continuity of 
time renders their successive existence possible. Both the 
co-existence and the successive existence are contingent ; but 
the space and the time can be thought of only as necessary. 
And, in a similar manner, any instance of number • — which is 
an element of succession, and which, with succession, measures 
time — involves the idea of its universal applicability. 

Now here it is to be observed, that a particular body and a 
particular succession being given, both of which we regard as 
variable and contingent, the mind finds itself in the possession 
of ideas of space and time, which it can think of only as un- 
changeable and absolutely necessary ; and further, that while 
body and succession imply Hmitation, the ideas of space and 
time imply the absence of all limitation, indestructibility, and 
immensity. Leaving now the particular phenomena of body 
and succession, the reason takes possession of pure space and 
time, as its appropriate and rightful domain. Here it pro- 
ceeds to unfold sciences out of ideas alone : breadthless lines, 
depthless surfaces, bodiless figures, and abstract numerical rela- 
tions. ' These are the pure and the exact sciences — geometry, 
theoretical arithmetic, and algebra regarded as the investigation 
of the relations of space and number by means of general 
symbols — pure, as incapable of being formed out of material 
phenomena, and as being unmixed with them ; and exact, as 
never exceeding and never falling short of the i^rinciples on 
w^hich they are based. And when the mind, having discoursed 
with the truths involved in the ideas of space, time, and num- 
ber, returns freighted with the science of pure mathematics to 
the region of material phenomena, it finds that all such phenom- 
ena, whether objects or events, sustain relations to this science, 
and are subject to its conditions. And it is because these 
truths of pure mathematics extend to all external phenomena, 
that such sciences as astronomy and mechanics are termed 
mixed mathematics ; involving as they do both pure mathemat- 
ical truths, and the special laws of the phenomena collected by 
observation. Here, then, in the order of time, we have first a 
particular sensation occasioned from without, and involving a 
cognition or perception of body or of succession ; involving, 
next, the intuition that the body is in space, and the succession 



PROGRESSION. 47 

in time ; and this, again, developing the ideas of tlie unlimited 
nature of both space and time — ideas, therefore, evolved from 
within, and not created by any material influence. Thus, we 
find ourselves in possession of the two important laws or axioms, 
Every body must be in space, and, Emery event must he in time. 
And everything is viewed by the understanding in the relation 
of co-existence, or of successive existence. 

6. All material phenomena are regarded by us as sustaining 
the relation of cause and effect. " The idea of cause, modified 
into the conceptions of mechanical cause, or force ; and resist- 
ance to force, or matter, is the foundation of the mechanical 
sciences ; that is, Mechanics, (including Statics and Dynamics,) 
Hydrostatics, and Physical Astronomy. The conception of 
force is suggested by muscular action exerted ; the conception 
of matter arises from muscular action resisted." * Our obser- 
vation of material phenomena, indeed, can give us only a succes- 
sion of events. And hence, Hume, who admitted no element of 
thought beyond that which such phenomena supply, concluded 
that we know nothing of cause and effect beyond the relation 
of mere sequence — that in saying every effect has a cause, we 
are only affirming that an effect is the latter of two given events, 
or merely expressing a relation of antecedence and consequence. 
But every one is conscious that the relation of succession is 
one thing, and that the relation of cause and effect is another. 
And the ground of this distinction appears as soon as ever we 
turn our attention from material to mental phenomena. In the 
effects which we ourselves produce we are conscious of more 
than a mere sequence — we are conscious of voUtion and per- 
sonal effort, and of an event as the result of that casual effort. 
When, therefore, the relations of succession and of cause and 
effect coincide, the latter is the principle, the former the conse- 
quence of the principle. Even Locke affirms that it is from 
the internal, and not from the external, that the idea of power 
is first given.f And, having gained our first notion of causaHty 
from the consciousness of our own personal effort, we transfer 
the notion to the changes observable in the material world. 
The objective does not originate the idea of power, we derive 
it from our own consciousness of conjoined effort and effect, and 
apply it to the objective. But whence the felt necessity and 



* Dr. Whewell's " Phil, of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i. pp. xxiv. xxv. 
t B. II. c. xxi. \ 4. 



48 MAK. 

universality of the application? Induction cannot have sup- 
plied it, for that is limited both in kind and degree. Besides, 
the mind does not wait for induction ; the production of one 
single effect, in childhood, is sufficient to give the mind the con- 
viction in question. And hence all beheve that no phenomena 
can begin to exist in space or in time, without an adequate 
cause. Evidently, the idea must be grounded in the very con- 
stitution of the mind. As sensation itself imphes the antece- 
dence of the cause which occasions it, so the recognition of that 
causal relation implies the antecedence of the idea or principle 
of causality in the human mind ; an idea which admits of no 
limitation. And thus, we have, in addition to the preceding 
axioms, the fundamental truth. Every phenomenon must have a 
cause. Everything is regarded by us as exhibiting a relation 
of causal dependence. 

7. Another relation under which all phenomena are \newed 
is the relation of properties to a substance. External objects 
are revealed to our sensational perceptions as qualities and pro- 
perties, and in all our natural investigations, we unavoidably 
assume that these qualities are the qualities of something ; that 
besides these properties there is a substance of which these are 
the properties ; and these properties are conceived of as insep- 
arable from the substance. And hence the idea of substance : — 
its related conceptions of polarity, chemical affinity, and sym- 
metry, are regarded as the basis of mechanico-chemical and 
chemical sciences. 

As we can define matter in no other way than by enumerat- 
ing the sensible qualities, so, says Stewart, in respect of mind. 
" we are conscious of sensation, thought, and volition — opera- 
tions which imply the existence of something which feels, 
thinks, and wills. Every man, too, is impressed with an irre- 
sistible conviction that all these sensations, thoughts, and voh- 
tions, belong to one and the same thing — to that which he 
calls himself"- The personal existence — the self — does not 
come under the eye of reflection, only its manifestations in sen- 
sation and voKtion. And what is this self which is so revealed 
but the subject of these operations ; the unity of our being, as 
distinguished from the plurality of consciousness ; its identity, 
as distinguished from its variable manifestations ; substance, as 
distinguished from attributes. In a similar manner, property 
and substance imply each other in the external world. The 
perception of qualities involves the idea of substance in which 
they inhere, and of which they are the manifestation. But this 



t»ROGKESSIO^\ 49 

idea of substance is not obtained by an analysis of these mani- 
festations, for they presuppose it. The antecedence of this idea 
is necessary in order to make our apprehension of these quah- 
ties possible. And the belief of this distinction between sub- 
stance and properties admits of no limitation. Here, then, we 
have the additional principle, Every attribute implies a sub- 
stance. 

8. Secondary qualities — color, sound, heat, odor, flavor — 
are conceived of as having an existence exterior to us, (though 
not such as we sensibly apprehend them,) and as sustaining 
external relations. That all bodies exist in space, we have 
seen to be an unavoidable and universal axiom. The convic- 
tion of which we are now speaking, however, advances a step 
further, and implies that we and they exist in one common 
space. The idea of externality is essential to all reasoning 
concerning objective existence : even Berkeley assumed it in 
his views of optics and acoustics. And further, it might be 
shown that the idea of an objective is essential to all reasoning : 
even Fichte, while denying a real objective, found it necessary 
to suppose an ideal objective, in order to afford the means of 
activity to the subjective. In other words, if God had not 
created a material objective, the mind, constituted as it now is, 
would have had to feign one. But as was stated in the preced- 
ing section, the same act by which objects are perceived, reveals 
also their externality. Tlieir outness is not merely a form which 
the mind assumes, but a fact which it discerns. But our pres- 
ent proposition affirms, still further, that even the secondary 
qualities of matter exist, and are related, in a sphere exterior 
to the sentient faculty, though not such as sense apprehends 
them. And the ultimate aim of optics, acoustics and the doctrine 
of heat is to determine the nature and laws of the processes by 
wliich the impression of any given secondary quality is pro- 
duced. All measm-es, of sensible qualities, indeed, must ulti- 
mately refer to the appropriate sense •— must be supplied, that 
is, by their sensible effects ; but the effects measured are such 
as refer us to number and space, or as admit of being estimated 
in quantity. Thus, having found by an appeal to sense that 
expansion increases with heat, we can measure heat by expan- 
sion ; and only in such manner can secondary qualities be- 
come the subjects of physical science. Secondary qualities, 
then, as occasions of sensation, are conceived of as objective, 
or as sustaining relations exterior to the sentient apprehen- 
sion. 

5 



50 MAN. 

9. External phenomena are universally regarded as sustain- 
ing relations of resemUance, involving ideas of identity and 
difference. It is only in this way that they can either proclaim 
their origin or answer their end. It might have been expected, 
therefore, that if relations of magnitude, position, motion, 
number, proportion, and affinity, exist in the world without, the 
knowledge of these relations would be found in the human 
mind. Accordingly, the sciences we have enumerated are the 
mental expressions and methodical arrangements of these rela- 
tions, involving the idea of like and unlike, as far as the mind 
of man has been able to trace them. 

If relations of kijid or natural affinity exist among objects, it 
is obviously important that they should be classed accordingly. 
For not to be able to recognize likeness where it exists, would 
be to reduce nature to a chaos of isolated and incongruous 
objects, and to impose on the memory a burden under which it 
would speedily sink. On the other hand, not to be able to 
recognize differences where they exist, would be to reduce nature 
to a scene of uninstructive sameness, in which all distinctions 
would be confounded. Now, by certain processes of abstraction 
and generalization, the understanding distributes objects ac- 
cording to these distinctions ; and, hence, in the " classificatory 
sciences " we have such divisions as species and genus, class and 
order. But a species is composed of individuals. And what is 
the condition of the individuality of an object but this, that its 
identijication shall he possible, that reasoning concerning it shall 
he possible. This supposes that the object has inseparable pro- 
perties, or an essential constitution. And hence our conception 
of species, leaving behind all the accidents and unessential parts 
of the individual, associates all such individuals as have the 
same essential properties and constitution, and indicates them 
by a common name. A genus, again, is a collection of species, 
in which, leaving out of view what may be peculiar to this or 
that species, we combine the characters common to the whole, so 
as to be able to reason concerning the collection as a whole, and 
to apply to it a common name. Thus, every individual is a 
representative of the species to which it belongs ; every species 
is a representative of the genus to which it belongs; every 
genus, of its order ; and so on through each ascending step of 
classification. In contemplating several objects, we abstract the 
points in which they agree, disregarding the differences ; we 
then generalize, by giving to these objects a name applicable to 
them in respect of this agreement. By this generalization we 



PROGRESSION. 51 

obtain a conception of the common characteristic of many ob- 
jects. So that conception, differing alike from the images of 
Reahsm, and from the mere terms of Nominalism, identifies 
that common feature of resemblance wherever it exists, and 
retains and expresses it ever after. And this conception of 
resemhlance, based on the ideas of identity and difference, is 
another form or law under which we feel the necessity of view- 
ing whatever receives our attention. 

10. But w;/iy these laws of the understanding? The question 
reminds us of another conviction under which the mind acts — 
that of design or Jinal cause. Means and ends are the objects 
of its incessant pursuit. In respect to organized bodies, in 
which the structure of every part points to a purpose, and 
where we unavoidably speak of disease as failure of a proper 
end, the conception of a final cause is so obvious, that even 
they who reject it under one form, will bt found to be directly 
affected by it under another form.* Thus, also, in reply to the 
question relating to the ends answered by the laws of the 
understanding, it is evident that, if the Divine manifestation be 
progi-essive, the succession of events which it implies must be 
met by a sense of successiveness ; if it be diversified, the con- 
ception of identity and difference are necessary, alike to bind 
individuals into classes, and to analyze classes into individuals; 
if it be divinely originated, the idea of causation is necessary in 
order to trace events to a First and Efficient Cause ; and if it 
have a purpose, no less indispensable is the idea of a Final 
Cause in order that the mind may be ever moving in the direc- 
tion of the end ; and so of the other laws of thought which we 
have noticed. Of the law of which we are now speaking, it is 
only necessary to add that it is the idea of Design which puts 
the guiding clue into the hand of scientific research, that it 
evolves system from phenomena once considered chaotic, and 
gives us the assurance of its presence in the most remote 
and unexplored regions of creation. The conception of a Final 
Cause is inseparably involved in the operations of the human 
mind. 

11. Logic. — These remarks prepare us, partly, to reply to 
the question proposed relative to the modes of pursuing and in- 
vestigating truth. The mind, we see, has laws of its own, 
and hence the possibility of Logic as a science. Besides per- 
ceiving the phenomena of the external world, it can reproduce 

* See " The Pre- Adamite Earth,*' p. 120. 



52 MAN. 

the plienomeiia of its own consciousness which these perceptions 
had occasioned, and can observe and analyze them, and thus 
deduce the laws of its own operations. Its thoughts, indeed, 
are primarily occasioned by an outward influence ; it thinks 
about something ; but, subsequently, dispensing with that some- 
thing which may be regarded as the material of the thoughts, it 
can bend its attention to the thoughts themselves. In mathe- 
matics, for example, it has thoughts about quantity ; but, then, 
leaving the quantity out of view, it can make the thoughts 
themselves the objects of its exclusive contemplation. And to 
mark the foniis which the thoughts assume when thus detached 
from their matter — the laws which the process of thinking and 
reasoning evolves — and the order which they observe, is the 
province of the science of Logic. Its 'primary office is not to 
teach the mind to think ; but to expound the necessary laws of 
thought, or how the mind must think. On this account logic 
is the most abstract of all the sciences ; for, while every other 
science involves a code of principles or laws respecting the 
objects of which it treats, logic abstracts these very laws from 
their material objects, expounding the laws which regulate 
them, and forming them into a code. 

12. Induction. — But if the mind have laws of its own, and 
if the world without have laws of its own also, may not the for- 
mer be employed in the discovery of the latter? The laws of 
the mind, indeed, may be more than co-extensive with the laws 
of nature ; may extend to higher relations and to other worlds ; 
but as far as the field of nature extends, may it not appear that 
"'• deep calleth unto deep " — the logic of the mind to the logic 
of nature ? It is true that the mind had long operated sponta- 
neously on the world without — had made considerable progress 
in science, and art, and the institutions of society, before ever 
its logical operations were made to assume a scientific form. 
And the analysis of this science, and art, and external manifes- 
tation of itself, greatly facilitated the discovery of its own laws 
of activity. For every truth which the mind had expressed or 
embodied in the world Avithout, was an exponent of a law 
within. And, now, having observed its operations and system- 
atized these laws within, it can emerge again to employ them 
in the regulation of its movements, and iii testing the truth of 
its inferences, relative to external phenomena. This is the 
Logic of Induction. Beginning with the observation, it may be, 
of a single fact, the mind aims to ascend from this point to the 
expression of the general law of which that fact, and innumer* 



PROGRESSION. 53 

merable otliers, are the exponents. The process by which it 
tracks and verifies the law through wide and various ramifica- 
tions is that of inductioii ; according to which, observed facts 
are so connected as to yield new truths; and these truths, 
regarded in their turn as facts, are so associated as to produce 
yet higher truths; and so onwards through a succession of 
higher and wider generalizations. And the province of induc- 
tive Logic is to test the truth inferred in this manner from 
facts, and thus silently and indirectly to discipline the mind in 
its spontaneous movements after knowledge. To this subject 
we shall advert again when we come to speak of the Deductive 
method. 

13. Art. — The objects of nature in all their endless beauty, 
and variety, and elaborate perfection, are worh of Divine art ; 
for they were all conceived in the infinite mind of the Maker, 
and embody and express the laws of the Divine Intelligence. 
In works of human art, the procedure of the Infinite Artist and 
Mechanist is feebly copied. Taking a product of the Divine 
Hand, and which is susceptible of other forms and applications 
than that which is already given to it, tlie human artist aspires 
to impress it with one of these new characters. But " the pro- 
phetic eye of art " is " the mind's eye ; " the forecasting con- 
ception of the mind, aiming to express itself outwardly accord- 
ing to its own laws of proportion, congruity, harmony, and 
grace, but in obedience to the pre-existing laws of the material 
objects and laws with which it works. 

14. Here, then, is a second means of knowledge. The last 
section gave us objects, but unconnected; this has given us 
their mutual relations. By perception, the impressions of sense 
are given as facts; the understanding gives the relations of 
these facts, disclosed by reflection, as science. The laws of 
causation, successiveness, and resemblance, are found, in opera- 
tion, alike in the world within and the world without. The 
relations of the subjective answer to those of the objective, and 
to each other ; so that all the objects and the ideas which come 
under these relations are found to be capable of suggesting one 
another. But if such be the correspondence of the mind to 
objective nature, how subtle, complicated, and immense must 
be the web of its associations ! Consequently, how vast and 
varied the means of knowledge thus brought within its reach I 
Having looked abroad over creation, man can then look within 
and scan the wondrous instrument — his own mind — by which 
he has done it : can place its past operations and their results 

5* 



54 



MAN. 



before him objectively, and view them as if thej foi-med merely 
an additional phenomenon in the aggregate of things existing 
in the world without. As the visible objects of creation are 
facts expressing for his observation Divine thoughts, so his own 
thoughts are additional facts submitted to his notice for the same 
end. 

15. The pre-existing relations of the material system into 
which man has been introduced, were arranged with a pro- 
spective regard to the mind which is to trace them. They are 
made for the man, and not the man for them. He is their 
proximate or medial end. So that while it may be proper to 
say that, chronologically, the objective determines what the 
subjective shall be, it is right to say that, logically, nature was 
preconfigured to the destined constitution of the human mind. 
According to Kant, indeed, the qualities we attribute to out- 
ward objects are really derived from our own minds, so that 
the science of logic must exactly correspond with the science 
of physics, or rather, they would be identical. But the truth 
is, so nicely are the objective and the subjective adjusted, that 
they expound each other. A lofty intelligence, on surveying 
the creation before man was made, might have foretold what 
the characteristics of his mental and bodily constitution would 
be ; or the same intelligence, had it been possible for him to 
meet with man in some distant tract of the universe, and with- 
out previously knowing anything of the planet for which he 
was destined, might have accurately conceived its all-related 
constitution. So exquisite is the adjustment of which we speak, 
that, were it to be d-eranged in a single principal relation, there 
is ground to conclude, that not only might it make all future 
progress in knowledge impossible, but perplex and render una- 
vaihng all that we now possess ; but that, as long as it remains 
undisturbed, every new and well-directed effort of the mind 
ensures some new discovery of truth, and every such discovery 
imparts additional power for making further progress still. 



Sect. HE. — Reason, Speculative and Realized, or Ideal 
and Applied.^ 

1. If in addition to the sensible phenomena of external 
nature, and to their objective relations, there be corresponding 

* The distinction of the division I have adopted — of sensational per- 
ception, reflective understanding, and rational beliefs — from that of Kant's 



PROGRESSION. 



55 



objects iiirmitely greater — corrcsponcliiig, that is, as time to 
eternity, or as the finite to the infinite — and if the idea or belief 
of their existence would tend to exalt our conceptions of God 
more even than all the material, and the relations of the material 
indirectly ascertained, then man may be expected either to 
have this idea or a native susceptibihty to have it awakened in 
his mind. 

2. We have seen that the mind is sensibly related to every 
external object, and that if external objects are related by com- 
mon laws, so also the mind has corresponding laws of intelli- 
gence. But we have seen also that all these objective relations 
point to other and higher objects ; they awaken ideas of certain 
l)rinciples or truths metaphysically necessary in order to account 
for their existence. While speaking of the laws of the under- 
standing, we were constantly and una\oidably presupposing 
these principles. What are these ultimate truths or beliefs ? 
In order to illustrate their nature, we may refer to the following. 
We have found that no object can be conceived of without the 
accompanying idea of space — no succession can be imagined 
without the accompanying idea of duration — no mental opera- 
tion be recalled without involving the idea of time in which the 
act is performed. Every change necessarily presupposes a 
cause, and involves the principle of causality of which the 
change is a particular manifestation ; and every quality or phe- 
nomenon involves the conviction of a substratum in which 
it inheres, a substance of which the quality is a manifestation. 
Here are four objects of thought — body, succession, change, 
quality; and here are the four conditions of these objects re- 
spectively — space, time, cause, and subject. The former may 
vary ; we can conceive of any particular instances of them as 
even non-existent ; but the non-existence of the latter is incon- 
ceivable. Their existence, then, is antecedent to the existence 
of all sensible phenomena ; all phenomena presuppose them, 
and without them could not exist. Then they exist inde- 
pendently of all phenomena : our ideas of them are not the 
realities themselves, neither do we create the ideas in the act 
of knowing them. And icithout limitation ; for even to think 
away the limited and the finite, is to leave the unlimited and 
the infinite ; the former presupposes the latter, and is logically 
present in one and the same act of thought. Then, further, 



sense, understanding, and reason, if not appaxent already, will become 
sufflcientlv clear as we advance. 



56 MAN. 

the ideas of them must have existed in the Divine Mind ante- 
cedent to the means employed for their manifestation, and in 
order to it ; and the mind of man must have been pre-consti- 
tuted for the development of the same ideas, otherwise these 
means would be undecipherable. In the Mind of the Infinite 
Creator, indeed, the ideas preceded the production of the phe- 
nomena or laws by which they are indicated ; for the law is the 
idea made objective ; hence. Lord Bacon " describes the laws 
of the material universe as ideas in nature. Quod in natura 
naturata Lex, in natura naturante Idea dicitur." In the mind 
of man, on the contrary, the laws or phenomena take prece- 
dence, in the order of succession, of the ideas ; for as the ideas 
existed out of the relation of time, and independently of it, it 
was not until the phenomena were given that the conditions 
were suppUed to man, a being of sense and time, by which he 
could become conscious of or apprehend the ideas. But the 
ideas themselves, once apprehended, are as distinct irom the 
phenomena for the human mind, according to its nature, as 
they are for the Mind of the Divine Original. To a party 
speaking, the thought is first ; to the party listening, the speech ; 
for each, the thought is equally distinct from the speech, and, it 
may be, though hardly half-uttered, it is clearly apprehended. 
In a similar manner, the ideas of the Divine Mind uttered, or 
rather hinted, in the laws of nature, are seize-d and responded 
to by a mind made in its own image, and haTing them implied 
in its very constitution. 

3. Now, ideas such as those referred to, (and of which we 
shall have to notice some not susceptible of expression in 
material phenomena,) are to be regarded as characteristic of 
the reason, the highest intellectual prerogative of man. (a) That 
they are not tlie creatures of experience is evident, for they are 
characterized by universality, whereas experience can testify 
only to particular cases ; they are characterized by necessity, 
whereas experience can know nothing of what will be or of 
what must be. But may not these ideas be the ultimate expres- 
sions of that generalizing faculty which collects all the individ- 
ual results of experience, and forms them into a whole ? 
Still such generalizations can only give us experimental truths, 
and truths therefore destitute of the properties of universality 
and necessity which distinguish the ideas or beliefs of the rea- 
son. Neither can the imagination be supposed to originate 
them, for this faculty has to do, not with the necessary, but 
with the possible. Nor can any stren^h of mere association 



PROGRESSION. 57 

account for their felt necessity ; for while the dissociation of 
certain things which we have never seen otherwise tlian to- 
gether, would not greatly surprise us, the severance or contradic- 
tion of other things which we have never seen illustrated, it 
may be, more than once, is utterly inconceivable. And the 
only satisfactory explanation of the difference is, that wliile the 
former would only contradict our experience, the latter would 
offer violence to our reason. The one is merely the correction 
of an inference ; the other, an assault on our mental constitu- 
tion. 

4. (b) Accordingly, there are some truths which exist in and 
for the mind alone. The pure mathematical sciences consist 
of the evolved relations of some of these truths. Their only 
principles are definitions and axioms ; their only method of 
proof that of deduction. So truly are tbey fundamental, that 
the progress of the principal inductive sciences depends on 
their cultivation. Theu' truths are the last authority of all 
judgments on the subjects to which they relate. They are pure, 
as being incapable of perfect realization in material bodies. 
External nature knows nothing of mere abstract truth. All its 
objects are concrete ; the abstract is only given m them. But 
though the truths in question have never been, never can be, 
objectively realized, their subjective reahty possesses all the 
certainty of our intuitive consciousness. No exception can 
limit their universality. No conceivable relation or power can 
affect their necessity. 

5. (c) A prior idea or purpose exists in the mind, and is 
necessary for it, in every inquiry after truth. Every experi- 
ment is a question, and every question is founded on some idea 
of the answer. In every such effort, the mind is deductive 
before it is inductive ; synthetic before it is analytic. How, 
inquires Plato, can you expect to find, unless you have a gen- 
eral notion of what you seek? Equally does Bacon himself 
teach that the mind must bring to every experiment a precogi- 
tation, or antecedent idea, as the ground of that prudens qucestio, 
or fore-casting query, which he pronounces to be the prior half 
of the knowledge sought. " This conception," says Jouffroy, 
'' is the fundamental axiom in all the sciences of facts, the torch 
which guides their researches, and the soul which animates 
their method." To supply such conceptions the mind is im- 
pelled by the idea that all phenomena have causes and laws, 
and that by assigning these the phenomena will be accounted 
for. And as the reason contains in itself the conditions of all 



58 



MAN. 



science, so its irresistible aim is to trace all science to its last 
results, and to harmonize it in one system. 

6. We have seen that the Ideas or ultimate facts of the reason 
are not acquired by generahzation like the facts of the under- 
standing. Unlimited space, for example, is not a general idea 
derived from connecting together a number of particular spaces. 
To conceive of it as otherwise than all-embracing and bound- 
less is impossible. How, then, do these ideas originate, or 
what is their relation to the mind ? That they are not innate, 
in the sense of being already present to the consciousness when 
its activity begins, and needing nothing from without to quicken 
them, is obvious; for they never arise in the mind at first 
otherwise than as the concomitant of some sensational percep- 
tion. K^ant opens his great work with this sentence, " That all 
our knowledge begins with experience does not achnit of a 
doubt." Equally clear is it, on the other hand, that they are 
not created by experience, however they may be occasioned by 
it, or begin with it ; for every act of the understanding pre- 
supposes them, nor would experience itself be possible without 
them. They must then be regarded as connate to the mind, 
and as forming the necessary products of the reason preconsti- 
tuted to then* formation. So that although requiring for their 
development the outward solicitations of experience, v,dien 
called into activity they unfold truths which interpret that ex- 
perience, and give law to the understanding. 

7. In their development, then, there are two orders of rela- 
tions to be noticed — the logical and the chronological. For 
example : " the idea of body and the idea of space being given, 
which supposes the other ? which is the logical condition, or that 
which authorizes the admission of the other ? Evidenth^, the 
idea of space. We cannot admit the idea of body without pre- 
supposing the idea of a place for that body ; " * and this illus- 
trates our meaning in saying that without the facts or truths of 
the reason, experience itself would be impossible ; for without 
the presupposition of space, the admission of a body would be 
inconceivable. But there is also a chronological order to be 
noticed. For it by no means follows that because a given 
idea logically authorizes another, therefore it must historically 
precede it. If we had not first the notion of body, we should 
never have the idea of space. No perceptible point of time 
intervenes, but yet it is necessary that, in the order of succession, 

^ M. Cousin's Examination of Locke's Essay, c. U. 



PROGRESSION. 59 

the perception of bodj should precede, in order that the idea of 
space which contains it might be evolved in the consciousness. 
Experience, then, is the clironological condition or antecedent 
of knowledge ; the ultimate facts of the reason are the logical 
conditions or antecedents of experience, and therefore of knowl- 
edge. 

8. This distinction between the logical and chronological 
order of our ideas, introduces, and helps to illustrate, an im- 
portant distinction between the ideas of the reason, distributing 
them into two classes. Our section on sensational perception 
gave us the phenomena of external nature. Our section on 
the reflective understanding gave us the fact of our own sub- 
jective existence. Chronologically, the objective precedes the 
subjective ; sensation occasioned from without is the antecedent 
of the knowledge of the er/o. Logically, the subjective pre- 
cedes the objective ; for it is the condition of the sensation. In 
the present section, we have to do with the ultimate and all- 
embracing truths which contain and account for both the finite 
subjective and the finite objective. We have now, therefore, 
reached a point in which both these finites, percipient and per- 
ceived, are to be regarded as objective to the Infinite Mind — 
the point (I would say it reverently) occupied by the Divine 
Creator of both, before either was called into existence. There 
must have been certain truths or facts logically or necessarily 
presupposed by the Divine Creator himself, in order to creation 
and Divine manifestation. And to these necessary truths, the 
universe, including the mind itself, must be related as to the 
conditions of its existence, themselves unconditioned; so that 
man, if he is to apprehend these ultimate relations, must be able 
to presuppose these truths also. 

9. Now it will be found, I submit, on due reflection, that among 
the presuppositions in question are the four to which reference 
has been already made. The Divine purpose to create neces- 
sarily presupposed that Substance, or infinite Being, of which aU 
creation should be the manifestation ; that Activity, which was 
equal to the causation of the objective universe ; that infinite 
space in which all created things should be placed ; and that 
infinite time, in which all the successions of events should occur. 
But, next, is there not a characteristic common to the former 
two of these presuppositions which do not belong to the latter ? 
Time and space are necessary only as conditions of creation ; 
Being and Activity are necessary as conditions, and as some- 
thing more. The relation of the former to a creation is nega- 



60 MAN. 

tive, consisting in the absence of external obstacles ; while that 
of the latter is positive, and constitutes the internal ground of a 
creation, is both the efficient cause, and the sufficient reason, 
of it. 

10. Further, the Infinite Subjective is here contemplated in 
a twofold relation — as Substance, and as Activity or Cause. 
To conceive of Substance without the eternallj self-contained 
Activity, which in its objective operation we call Cause, is as 
impossible as to conceive of Activity without Substance — for 
Mind necessarily involves the idea of activity. But on coming 
forth and taking possession of Space and Time in an objective 
manifestation of properties and effects, two classes of truths 
appear — those which relate to the possibihty of a creation, and 
those which relate to its actuahty ; or, ideas antecedently and 
unconditionally necessary, and the truths belonging to these 
ideas as now caused to be embodied or signified objectively, 
and only conditionally necessary — conditionally, that is, on the 
purpose to create. Here, then, is truth unconditionally, and 
truth conditionally necessary ; the latter logically reposing on 
the former. And this difference leads to a corresponding dis- 
tinction in the Reason itself, revealed in the different mode of 
its action, and in the different character of the objects to which 
it is directed — a distinction which may be designated as spec- 
ulative, and as applied or practical.* Reason as practical has 
to do with truth conditionally necessary — with the facts of ex- 
perience supplied by the understanding — to an induction of 
which it impels the understanding by the conviction that they 
involve a necessary truth, and in order to disengage that truth. 
As the speculative reason, it has to do with truths abstract and 
unconditional, and which have their evidence in themselves. In 
the former case, it deals with truth actualized — truth in the 
concrete ; and its office is to employ and direct the inductive 
understanding so as to elicit from its concrete materials all that 
relates to the abstract and necessary, and of which it has already 
the a priori idea ; in the latter, it has to do with truths not real- 
ized, nor fully reahzable, in the sensible world — such as the 
pure truths of Geometry. As speculative reason, it is consti- 
tutive, determining our ideas or beliefs ; as practical, it is direc- 
tive, regulating our mental activity. 

11. Thus reason has a subjective and an objective aspect, in 

* Not employing the term practical in the Kantian or moral sense, but 
as distinguished from speculative. 



PROGRESSION. 61 

winch respect it harmonizes with those operations of the mind 
which we have ah^eady considered. As the subjective sensation 
points objectively in perception, and as the subjective reflection 
points objectively in the understanding, so the reason as specu- 
lative deals with truth subjectively necessary, while as practical 
it contemplates so much of that truth as is actualized as a means 
to an end : in the former instance, proclaiming its ultim.ate 
authority by applying a necessary truth to a particular concep- 
tion, and superseding the necessity of experience ever after ; 
in the latter, universalizing a particular fact as true for all space 
and time.* 

12. AVhat is the Form in which the facts of reason exist in 
the mind ? It appears evident that the only notion which the 
understanding can have of the unlimited is merely the negation 
of the limited. Every positive notion suggests a negative 
notion — suggests the knowledge of a thing by what it is not. 
Hence, the division of the attributes of God adopted by some 
theologians into Negative and Positive, the negative attributes 
of infinity, eternity, and independence, denoting merely the 
absence of the limitation and dependence belonging to our own 
being. But though the infinite cannot be construed to the un- 
derstanding, it is within the province of the reason to affirm its 
existence. Though not comprehensible as an object of perfect 
knowledge, it is apprehensible as an object of thought ; though 
a negative truth to the conceptive understanding, to the affirm- 
ing reason it is positive, the very condition of its own possi- 
bility, and regulative of all the operations of the understanding. 
And as the possibihty of our intelligence rests ultimately on 
facts of reason which, as primitive, can be explained by nothing 
more simple, nor proved by anything more certain, they are to 
be regarded not so much in the forms of cognitions as of beliefs. 
And hence, we prefer denominating the primary affirmations of 
reason as Beliefs. 

13. I am aware of the diverse opinions entertained on this 
subject by the most distinguished metaphysicians, and would 
be only regarded as deferentially indicating my own convictions. 

^ For example, our own voluntary effort having given us the idea of 
causation, in mechanical science we apply the necessary truths of causa- 
tion to force and motion, on the grourud that what is true of the former is 
true of the latter : and the practical reason gives universality to the laws 
of force and motion, on the ground that what is true of them in one place 
and time, is true always and everywhere, or that time and space are, as 
we have seen, only conditional not causative. 
6 



62 



MAN. 



With Kant, I believe that the reason has the notion of the infi- 
nite and the unconditioned, and has it as a regulative prin- 
ciple of the mind itself; but, differing from him, I believe this 
notion to be more than a mere ens ratioms, existing in and for 
the mind alone ; that it has an objective reality with which it is 
truly conversant, and tlie existence of which it is entitled to 
believe on the same ground as that on which it believes the 
existence of the limited and the conditioned, that of conscious- 
ness. With M. Cousin, I regard the infinite as admitting of 
■'apperception," or as apprehensible by thought, but must 
utterly reject the proposition that it is also comprehensible, in 
the sense of being reducible to the compass of our conscious- 
ness, or exhaustible within it. My knowledge constitutes the 
ground of my belief, but neither prescribes the internal nature 
of its objects, nor measures the extent of its domain. With 
Sir William Hamilton, I regard the notion of the unconditioned 
and the infinite as necessary, but then I do not receive it as such 
merely on mental compulsion, or in order to escape a contradic- 
tion, but as a fact which I can think of as possible, as well as 
feel to be necessary. 

14 If I am required argumentatively to prove that I can 
think of the infinite as positive and possible, I can only appeal 
to the consciousness itself, of which it is an ultimate fact ; and 
as such, and for the very reason that it is such, its analysis is 
impossible, and to attempt it an absurdity. And here, it ap- 
pears to me, lies the secret of the difference between those who 
regard the notion of the unconditioned as being only the nega- 
tive of the conditioned, and those who deem it apprehensible 
as a positive. No mere argumentative effort to bring the sub- 
ject within the limit of the understanding — no ascent from the 
finite and the conditioned in the direction of the unconditioned, 
can ever conduct us beyond the point where, feeling that we 
have reached the end of that which we know, we also feel that 
beyond there must be something more which we do not know. 
" We are thus taught the salutary lesson," (says Sir W. Hamil- 
ton, very admirably.) " that the capacity of thought is not to be 
constituted into the measure of existence, and are warned from 
recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co- 
extensive with the horizon of our faith. And, by a wonderful 
revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our ina- 
bility to conceive aught beyond the relative and finite, inspired 
with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned be- 
yond the sphere of all comprehensible reality." Now, here it 



PROGRESSION. 



63 



is admitted that we attain to " a revelation " which " inspires us 
with a beUef in the existence of something unconditioned." 
But the question is, whether this revelation and inspired behef 
of an unconditioned something, and therefore of a positive, is a 
mere inference of the understanding, or a truth of the reason, 
independent of all argumentative processes, and presupposed 
by them. That it cannot be the former, is already admitted by 
both parties. If, then, it be the latter, its very nature as a 
primary truth of reason forbids its analysis. It is a belief of 
something — of a positive objective reality. It is a revelation in- 
spiring belief — a self-revealing light. It admits only of appeal, 
and must be presumed. To think either of decompounditig it, 
or of measuring its evidence, is as absurd as to think of carry- 
ing a line around the unlimited of which it is the revelation, 
and for the very reason that it is its revelation. Every demon- 
stration is unwound from something indemonstrable and given, 
or believed as actual. To require a reason for the possibility 
of the belief, beyond the fact of its reality as given in the con- 
sciousness, is to attempt to ascertain what precedes the first, or 
" what supports the foundation." 

15. I would suggest, that much of the difficulty attending 
this subject is imposed by the mind itself, and arises from the 
attempt to conceive of infinity, instead of an infinite Being. 
To think even of a limited abstraction requires an effort ; but 
to think of an abstraction unlimited, is an aggravation of the 
task, from which the mind soon recoils. Nor is it called to 
make the attempt. The doctrine of infinity comes to us clothed 
in the attributes of a personal God. " The ratio formalis of In- 
finity may not be understood by us clearly and distinctly, but 
yet the Being which is infinite may be. Infinity itself cannot 
be on this account, because we conceive it by denying all limita- 
tions and bounds to it ; but the Being which is infinite we ap- 
prehend in a positive manner, although not adequately, because 
we cannot comprehend all which is in it As we may clearly 
and distinctly see the sea, though we cannot discover the bounds 
of it, so may we clearly and distinctly apprehend some perfec- 
tions of God, when we fix our minds on them, although we are 
not able to grasp them altogether in our narrow and confined 
intellects, because they are infinite." * 

In speaking of the ultimate facts of the reason, then, as be- 
liefs, we must not be supposed to be measuring their certainty, 

* Stillingfleet's Origines Sacroe, B. ILL cc. i. v, vi 



64 MAN. 

or to have any reference whatever to their logical value. We 
employ the term as serving both to denote their primordial 
and independent character, and to prevent the inference to 
which the use of the term cognitions might lead, that we deem 
it possible to know, in the sense of comprehending, the infinite. 
Know it in the true logical sense of knowledge, we do — if by 
knowledge is meant firm belief of what is true, on sufficient 
grounds * — for consciousness itself attests its truth. And though, 
in their ultimate character, the facts of reason transcend the 
understanding, yet as beUefs of objective realities, as positive 
facts, they are generative of truths to which the understanding 
is competent. As primary positive beliefs, they may be re- 
garded as standing midway between the Infinite Objective and 
the inductive understanding ; affirming the existence of the for- 
mer, constituting the ground for the operations of the latter, har- 
monizing and uniting both. The understanding is met in its 
laboring ascent from the sensible, by the reason in its descent 
from communion with the invisible and the unlimited ; and in 
the coincidence of the two consists our intelligence. 

16. As to the Number of our original beliefs, no arbitrary 
catalogue can suffice. The true classification of the elements of 
reason must be founded in a reason which shall comprehend 
and account for them all. " Perhaps a practical standard of 
some convenience would be," says an able metaphysician, " that 
all reasoners should be required to admit every principle of 
which the denial renders reasoning impossible-! This is only 
to require that a man should admit, in general terms, those prin- 
ciples which he must assume in every particular argument, and 
which has been assumed in every argument, against their ex- 
istence. It is, in other words, to require that a disputant should 
not contradict himself; for every argument against the funda- 
mental laws of thought absolutely assumes their existence in the 
premises, while it totally denies it in the conclusion." 

* Archbishop Whateley's, Logic, B. IV. c. ii. § 2, Note. 

t " This maxim, (says Sir J. Mackintosh, in his Dissertation on Ethical 
Philosophy, § 6,) which contains a sufficient answer to all universal scep- 
ticism, is significantly conveyed in the quaint title of an old and rare book, 
entitled, Scivi sive ^ceptices et Scepticorum a Jure Disputationis exclusio, 
by Thomas White. ' Fortunately' says the illustrious sceptic himself, 
[Hume,] ' since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself 
suffices for that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical delirium ;' almost 
in the sublime and immortal words of Pascal, ^La Raison confond leg Dog- 
rnatistes, et hi Nature les Sceptiques,^ ^' 



niOGRESSION, V9 

17. The categories of Aristotle were not intended to include 
the infinite ; they were formed on the principle of regarding the 
basis of every law of thought as a property inherent in the out- 
ward object ; and they only assumed to distribute the finite. 
The categories of Kant, on the other hand, were formed on the 
principle that the mind, projecting itself on the object, beholds 
in the properties of nature nothing but the reflection of itself, 
and thus obtains a knowledge of the laws or conditions of its own 
activity. And in the same manner, his three irreducible ideas 
of the reason, the soul, the universe, and God, are purely sub- 
jective, and, as such, cannot be allowed to authenticate any 
objective knowledge whatever. In dealing with the same great 
problem, M. Cousin reduces the whole phenomena of reason to 
three inseparable elements — the infinite, the finite, and the re- 
lation between them ; or substance, causalHy, and the relation 
between them. Now, that everything may be viewed under this 
three-fold aspect is unquestionably true ; but so also may they 
be viewed under the three-fold aspect of identity, difference, 
and the relation between them ; of unity, plurality, and the re- 
lation between them ; and of many others. Indeed, he himself 
specifies many similar three-fold forms of classification. But 
the question is, whether some of these do not include new and 
distinct ideas. Admitting that identity, unity, eternity, all meet 
in the one infinite substance — the glorious and incomprehen- 
sible God — yet, unless it can be shown that the idea of justice 
is necessarily included in them, or that it is one with the idea 
of final cause, or that our ideas of plurality, imperfection, and 
externality, are all one, the catalogue cannot be deemed com- 
plete as an enumeration of original ideas, however great its 
merit may be as a classification of the objects to which the ideas 
relate. Doubtless, there is a point from which each of these 
methods — the objective, the subjective, and the ontological — 
appears to peculiar advantage ; and a still higher point from 
which the just results of all would be seen harmonized and com- 
pleted. And if ever that point be attained — to say nothing of 
the ministry of theology in pointing the way — all the primor- 
dial revelations there disclosed will, doubtless, be found to be in 
perfect coincidence with the presuppositions of inspired theology. 

18. In accordance with this conviction, I have already stated 
that if there were facts which the Divine Creator himself had to 
presuppose in order to creation and self-manifestation, and if 
man is the being to whom the manifestation is to be made, man 
must be able to presuppose them also ; for not to be able to do 



66 MAN. 

this, would be not to recognize its relation to the necessary and 
the unlimited, and, therefore, not to the Infinite Creator himself. 
And if the right specification of the elements of reason must be 
itself founded in a reason which shall embrace and account for 
them all, I believe the reason now hjpothetically stated to be 
the true one. The proposition requires that there should be a 
finite subjective, capable of receiving the manifestation, and a 
finite objective as a means of making it ; and, accordingly, we 
have seen that the notion of self, or of the ego, is implied in our 
every sensation, thought, word, and act, and is necessarily a 
primitive and universal notion ; we have seen also that this no- 
tion supposes the idea of a non-ego to which it stands opposed, 
and by which I am made conscious of my own distinct individu- 
ality ; and that all the ideas we have named of space and time, 
substance and cause, externality, resemblance, and design (ideas 
of perfection and right are hereafter to be considered) are evolv- 
ed in the process. Again, the proposition supposes that there 
was a point of duration when both these finites began to be, and 
when, with a view to it, all the ideas enumerated must have 
been present to the Infinite Mind as so many possibilities; and, 
accordingly, we have seen that our ideas of self and nature ne- 
cessarily imply correlative ideas of the infinite and unlimited, 
and that the reason authoritatively proclaims them. 

19. What ground have we for relying on the Certainty of our 
knowledge of the objective ? "A strange thing this ! exclaims 
Cousin. A being perceives or knows out of his own sphere. 
He is nothing but himself, and yet he knows something that is 
not himself Ilis own existence is, for himself, nothing but his 
own individuahty ; and yet, from the bosom of this individual 
world which he inhabits, and which he constitutes, he attains to 
a world foreign to his own. That the mind of man is provided 
with these wonderful powers, no one can doubt ; but are their 
reach and application legitimate? and does that which they 
reveal really exist? The intellectual principles have an in- 
contestable authority in the internal world of the subject ; but 
are they equally valid in reference to their external objects ?" 
This is the most profound problem of speculative philosophy ; 
for it involves the certainty of human knowledge. How do we 
know that things are what they appear ? How do we cross 
from psychology to ontology ; or effect a passage from the con- 
scious mind to the existence of things in themselves? The 
sceptic affirms that the mind is directly conscious only of its 
own operations, and that to assume the existence of anything 
objective and independent, is an assumption without proof. 



moGiiEssiox. 67 

20. (a) On which it may be remarked, first, that, hypothe- 
ticallj admitting the existence of an objective universe, it is im- 
possible to conceive of any other or higher ground of behef in 
the objective, than that which we possess in our own conscious- 
ness. Understanding by the subjective all that belongs to the 
thinking subject, and by the objective whatever belongs to the 
object of thought, we ask, how could we believe in the objective 
except on the faith of the subjective ? How would it be possi- 
ble for us to know the external, but by an internal principle ? 
It is I who know. My faculty of knowing is my own. To 
know or believe an existence, then, must be an actual state, or 
fact, of my own consciousness. 

21. {h) Equally inconceivable are any reasons to account 
for or establish the veracity of consciousness. The capacity of 
consciousness necessarily implies a structure and functions, laws 
of action, and whatever is essential in order to render experi- 
ence and reasoning possible. These laws and behefs of the in- 
tellectual nature must plainly be ultimate. And if ultimate, 
they cannot be defined, since no words can explain them to him 
who has not the ideas previously. No argument can corrobo- 
rate them, since all argument rests on them. No evidence can 
add to their certainty, for they are already facts of conscious- 
ness. Did their veracity admit of explanation and increase, it 
could only be owing to their not being ultimate, and to their be- 
ing reducible to facts which w^ere ultimate. 

22. (c) A universal scepticism then cannot be otherwise than 
self-contradictory ; questioning the authority of the very princi- 
ple on which it must rely while questioning it. " It is an at- 
tempt of the mind to act without its structure." Like Hume, 
the sceptic may go the length of saying — I do not merely affirm 
that we have not reached the truth, but that we never can ; that 
which I deny is the possibility of knowledge. The very struc- 
ture of the mind forbids it. But how, w^e ask, is this conclusion 
reached ? how, but by admitting the truth of the testimony of 
consciousness to one class of phenomena, the subjective, and de- 
nying it to another class, the objective : by assuming its truth at 
first for the express purpose of denying it afterwards. To 
question it at all, is to render it inconsistent for the questioner 
to form an opinion upon any subject, to inquire, to doubt, or 
even to think. " At this point, scepticism itself expires ; for, 
as Descartes says, Let a man doubt of everything else, he can- 
not doubt that he doubts." 

23. (c?) In answer to the great question, then, What is the 



68 Mxs. 

relation between the subjective and the objective ; or, What is 
the authority of our belief in the objective ? we reply, the 
identical authority on which we believe in the subjective; or, 
the only authority we have for believing at all. " In perception, 
consciousness gives as an ultimate fact a belief of the know- 
ledge of the existence of something different from self. We 
only believe that this something exists, because we believe that 
we know (are conscious of) this something as existing; and 
the belief of the hiowledge of the existence, necessarily involves 
the belief of the existence. Both are original, or neither. Does 
consciousness deceive us in the former, it necessarily deludes 
us in the latter ; and if the latter, though a fact of consciousness, 
be false, the former, because a fact of consciousness, is not true?"* 
Consciousness, then, declares that our knowledge of the external 
world is direct and immediate ; and it is because this knowledge 
is intuitive that it is adequate to the reality itself The mind, 
and that with which it is occupied, being both included in the 
unity of consciousness, give an ultimate fact which cannot be 
analyzed. 

24. (e) But consciousness gives us more than the material 
world. We have seen that in giving us the visible, it gives 
us, at the same time, the invisible which it presupposes and 
involves; and thus it launches us into the unlimited and the 
infinite. Now, on the grounds already stated, we must either 
call in question the authority of consciousness in itself, or admit 
its authority without reserve for all the facts which it attests, 
and therefore for the facts of the universal and the invisible. 

For example, every event, as interpreted by reason, supposes 
a cause ; reason proclaims the universality of this truth ; attests 
that in no conceivable case can we imagine it to be otherwise ; 
that to limit the fact is to destroy it. Equally conscious are 
we that, in sensation, this cause is not self, that it is without 
me ; and thus the principle of causality conducts us irresistibly 
to an external cause. Here, then, is an existence beyond me — 
a being ; for my notion of the nature of cause is derived from 
the perceived connection between my pwn voluntary effort and 
the effect which followed. I cannot now think of the aggregate 
of phenomena composing the universe, without admitting the 
existence of a Being by whom all the power is exercised w^hich 
these phenomena display. And what one conscious voluntary 
effort is to the Great First Cause, that a single act of memory 



* Sir WilUam Hamilton in Edin. Rev. Vol. IH. p. 198, Oct 1830. 



PROGRESSION. 69 

apprehending succession is to unlimited duration, and a single 
intelligent perception of objects and properties to the Infinite 
substance of which they are the manifestation. In other words, 
the universal is presupposed by the particular, and, in that 
sense, is given in it ; the necessary is given in the contingent ; 
the reason in sensation ; the objective in the subjective. And 
they are given directly, intuitively, and spontaneously; thus 
proclaiming, as clearly as by their characteristics of universality 
and necessity, that they are not inferences of experience, but 
are actually implied in the constitution of the mind. And is not 
the affirmation of the infinite, of w^hich I am conscious by the 
intuition of reason, as talid as the affirmation of the finite, of 
which I am conscious in sensational perception ? If the latter 
is legitimate, so also is the former ; and for the same reason, 
that it is attested by the authority of consciousness. " If a state 
of mind,'' says Morell, '-termed sensation, can give us the know- 
ledge of properties, why may not a state of mind termed in- 
tuition or reason give us the knowledge of substance ? Reason 
has as much right to take us out of ourselves as perception, 
and if the one cannot assert objective validity, neither can the 
other."* In each instance, the beliefs of which we are conscious 
are ultimate facts; and as such incapable of analysis, and 
independent of argumentative corroboration. Our primary 
experience is a belief; and "our intellectual life is a continued 
series of beliefs — of acts of faith in the invisible revealed by the 
visible — acts, which extend from the bosom of consciousness to 
the Infinite, and which reach even to the Being of beings." 

25. Let us mark and admire the provision which is thus 
made in the very structure of the mind, for the introduction of 
new truth on miraculous evidence. All knowledge rests ulti- 
mately on behefs — the beUef of necessary and universal truths. 
Each of these truths comes to us in a particular concrete form. 
Let body be given, and the notion of space is inevitable. Let 
change be given, and the idea of a cause adequate to the change 
is inevitably involved. Let a preternatural or superhuman 
change or event be given, and the reason inevitably assumes a 
preternatural relation, irresistibly believes a superhuman cause. 
In so doing, the mind is merely acting naturally ; "the reason," 
says Locke, "is only assenting to itself." 

26. Having thus illustrated and confirmed the truth of the 
general proposition placed at the head of this section, I may be 

* Modern Philosophy, Vol. I. 328. 



70 MAN. 

permitted to glance at the antecedent ground for expecting such 
a constitution of the mind as it hypothetically describes: We 
had seen that the mind is sensibly related to every external 
object; and that all objective things in nature, besides being 
related to each other, have corresponding relations in the 
human mind. But, in addition, there must be a sense in which 
both perceived and percipient must be related to whatever 
accounts for, or is presupposed in, the fact of their existence. 
And the apprehension of this relation, as it is the highest and 
the noblest, must be more desirable and important than that of 
any of the inferior relations to which reference has been made ; 
that is, must tend to bring us mentally nearer to the Divine 
Being, and to exalt our views respecting Him. 

But whence can this belief or apprehension come ? Will it 
be the result of experience, the self-completion and complement 
of sensation and experience merely ? Rather, may it not be 
expected to be original, connatural with the infinite, and only 
awakened into activity by experience ? For if the mind derives 
its sensations from external objects ; and its knowledge of the 
relations of these objects through reflection ; so, if there be a 
higher order of relations, it seems antecedently probable that 
an acquaintance with these will be traceable more directly to 
the constitution of the mind itself. If the perceived objective 
discloses our distinction from, yet relation to, things without; 
and if, under the eye of reflection, the subjective affirms the 
relation of external things among themselves, surely the per- 
cipient and reflective power itself, and in itself, will not be 
barren of information. If the mind, regarded simply as the 
subject of sensation, and as capable of dealing with its sensa- 
tions, discloses much, considered as itself an objective addition 
to creation, it may surely be expected to disclose more. The 
highest being, objectively considered, may be expected con- 
stitutionally to imply or reveal the highest relations. If the 
external universe be a wondrous volume, though unconscious 
of one of all the unnumbered ideas of which it is the expression, 
surely the mind which views every object as a letter, every fact 
resulting from a combination of these objects as a word, and 
every natural collocation of such words as a sentence significant 
of some lofty truth, must itself be more wonderful and instruc- 
tive still. And if those acts of the mind by which it recognizes 
the letters, and the words, and the relation of the words to each 
other, be wonderful, more wonderful must that power of the 
mind be which interprets the sentence, and which derives from 



PROGRESSlOJf. 71 

itself, through its union with the objective, the ideas which the 
Maker of both intended to convey. 

27. How Divine the arrangement by which the counterpart 
of every idea involved or implied in the external world sh^ll 
exist potentially in the human mind. Without these, the 
assumed end of the objective would fail ; for if that end be to 
reveal the infinite and eternal in God, the attainment of that 
end depends on the powers or susceptibilities which the finite 
subjective shall bring to it. If the ancient Aristotelean maxim 
— "pregnant with systems" — be admitted, that "there is no- 
thing in the intellect which was not previously in the sense," 
how important the addition made by Leibnitz, "except the 
intellect itself;" for in that mental constitution must be poten- 
tially involved not only all that the sense is capable of evolving, 
but the power of affirming the ultimate relations of both to 
God ; otherwise they will not glorify Him. And if it be true 
that the mind be a blank apart from the external creation, yet 
how elaborately must that apparent blank be prepared, when, 
by simply bringing it into the light and warmth of the objective, 
it glows with colors not of earth, and shows that from the first 
it had been written over with a secret writing by the hand 
of God. So that if a being of another race, capable of inter- 
preting creation, were to make creation, mental and material, 
his study, aftei- all that he had learned from material objects, 
and from the effects of these objects on the human mind in 
sensation, he would expect to learn more from the study of the 
mind itself — of the mind primitive and potential — than from all 
creation besides. 

28. Antecedents, logical and chronological. Among the truths 
to be evolved, and the consequences deducible, from the pre- 
ceding remarks, some are so important as to merit distinct 
attention. We have seen that, as a means of knowledge, the 
mind is the logical antecedent to external nature — reason to 
experience. Nor has our theory failed to disclose the ground 
of this fact. It is evident that the very design of an external 
universe, as contemplated from eternity by the Infinite Mind, 
presupposed certain facts as already existing, — such as the 
space in which creation should appear, and the Substance or 
Nature of which it should be a manifestation. These and 
certain other truths were the logical antecedents of a creation 
in the Divine Mind. He had not to create them ; could not 
but assume them ; the contrary is inconceivable. But if the 
Infinite Mind necessarily presupposed them in designing crea- 



72 MAN* 

tion, so also must the finite mind in interpreting creation. If, 
by an act of imagination, we conceive of creation as having yet 
to be begun, we shall find that our every conjecture respecting 
the great process would unavoidably involve and assume them. 
Nor can the assumption of these truths be less felt to be neces- 
sary, now that the manifestation is in progress, than it was prior 
to its origin. As necessary, they cannot admit of argumentative 
proof; because nothing is more certain, and because every 
argument rests upon them. As primary, they must be assumed, 
for there was nothing before them, and they are the conditions 
of the existence of everything that has come after. They could 
not but be assumed by the exalted Creator in His purpose of 
Divine manifestation ; and man, made in the intellectual image 
of God, will be found, in all his constructions of external nature, 
to be necessarily assuming them also. 

But we have seen likewise that, as a means of knowledge, 
external nature is the chronological antecedent to the mind — 
experience to reason. And for this our theory equally accounts. 
If the Infinite IVIind is to be made manifest to the finite mind, 
that which is to manifest Him must precede the development 
of the idea in the mind — the means must precede the end. 
A single fact may be sufficient for the purpose ; but some fact, 
some external object, the mind must have, both to reveal it to 
itself, and to awaken in it the idea of an external cause. Hence, 
the creation of the material universe historically preceded the 
creation, and awaited the arrival of the mind which was to 
interpret it; which would need such an object in order to 
acquire an idea of the Intelligent Cause presupposed; and 
which, having such an object, would awaken to the idea of the 
Creator in and by the very act of interpretation. 

29. The arguments a priori and a posteriori. The preced- 
ing paragraph implies the folly of setting up an exclusive claim 
for either of these two forms of argument. They involve and 
support each other. The argument a priori supposes an a pos- 
teriori postulate — a fact of experience — as its chronological 
antecedent ; for to suppose " that we can know anything pre- 
viously to experience would be a contradiction in terms." The 
fact or postulate, in question, indeed, may come immediately 
from within, may be a phenomenon of consciousness ; but that 
internal phenomenon supposes an external occasion. Accord- 
ingly, an examination of Clarke's celebrated Demonstration of 
the Being and Attributes of God, will show, that although the 
idea of God is given by reason, and not by experience, it is not 



PHOGRESSION. 73 

given without, at least, a fact of experience, as its antecedent 
occasion oi- condition.* In a similar manner, the argument a 
posteriori supposes an element strictly a priori, as its logical 
antecedent. For the reasoning from eifect to cause clearly pre- 
supposes the idea of causality ; without which all the phenom- 
ena of nature, though gazed at forever, would only be regarded 
by us as phenomena — an unmeaning aggregate of effects, and 
nothing more. The reasoning from the inconceivably compli- 
cated contrivances disclosed by nature to the skill of the Creator, 
presupposes the idea of design, without which all the illustra- 
tions of order, harmony and skill, as proofs of a Jinal cause, 
would exist in vain. But these ideas of causality and purpose 
are primary — presupposed in the things created ; and, as such, 
necessarily presumed by the mind that interprets creation by 
arguing from nature to its Maker. The 'e two modes of proof 
then, " are so little exclusive of each other, that each contains 
something of the other." And all evidence, whatever its form 
or kind may be, — whether that of testimony ; example or fact ; 
experience ; resemblance and analogy ; or of axioms and defini- 
tions, or demonstrative reasoning, — is reducible to the a priori 
and the a. posteriori proof, or forms different kinds of it. 

30. Necessary and contingent truth. For the reasons just 
stated, necessary truth relates to whatever facts are presupposed 
by creation ; facts, therefore, which existed before creation, and 
which still exist independently of it ; and facts which the In- 
finite Creator himself presupposed, for they are involved in the 
all-comprehending fact of His own Nature. Contingent truth 
relates to whatever facts exist on account of the former, and 
which could not exist without it. In contradistinction from the 
truth v^hich is necessary, universal, and primary, this is con- 
ditional, limited, and chronologically subsequent ; it is condi- 
tional as to being at all, as to being what it is, and when it 
is on the will of Him who is the sole reason why it is. There 
is, however, a third aspect of truth which it is important to 
notice, — namely, the conditionally necessary ; combining the 
characteristics of the two preceding classes. For example, in 
the proposition that every body supposes space, we have the 



* Accordingly, the eighth proposition of the argument which affirms 
that the i'irst Cause must be '■ intelligent," — in which, as he truly states, 
" lies the main question between us and the atheists " — is admirably sus- 
tained by an a posteriori argument ; he himself admitting that the prop- 
osition cannot be demonstrated a. priori. 
7 



74 JIAN. 

necessary idea of space, as that wliicli could not but be ; the 
conditional idea of body, as that Avhich might not have been ; 
and the conditionally necessary idea of the relation of the body 
to space — a relation necessary on the condition of the body 
existing. 

31. Synthesis and analysis. Then every necessary truth is 
synthetic, for it contains potentially all the contingent which 
rests on it, by which it can be made manifest, and of which the 
external universe is the development. Hence every abstract 
and necessary truth comes to us in a concrete state, or is given 
in a particular fact. On the other hand, contingent truth is 
analytic ; for, resting as it does on truths beyond itself, and ad- 
mitting as it does of combination with other contingent truths, 
it allows of analysis and generalization — analysis, in order to 
a generalization which shall reach as far as to the ultimate 
truths on which it rests. So that, while synthesis prevails in 
the objects of nature, the study of these objects must be conduct- 
ed analytically. 

32. Co-existence and successive existence. Every necessary 
truthy we have seen, is synthetic ; and every object in nature, as 
a symbolic expression of necessary truth, is synthetic also. Now 
in the Eternal Mind, as the seat of all necessary truth, the en- 
tire objective universe may be regarded as contemplated syn- 
thetically as a whole, and therefore as co-existent in space. In 
all which He has been pleased to create. He has only descend- 
ed from the general to the particular, from the great synthetic 
Whole to its parts ; which Whole is ever present to His all- 
comprehending purpose. But nature, synthetic, and co-existent 
as it is in the Divine Purpose, is, for an adequate reason, un- 
folded progressively. That w^hicli as an expression of necessary 
truth is potentially co-existent — is, as a means of human know- 
ledge, successively existent. In the former respect, it may be 
regarded in its relation to space ; in the latter, to time ; in that, 
as consisting of objects ; in this, of events. 

33. Deduction. External nature is to be regarded in the 
light of a sublime argument, in which the Creator is reasoning 
syllogistically, or deductively, from the necessary to the contin- 
gent, from principles to facts, from generals to particulars. With 
the great synthetic whole ever present to His mind, He is seen 
unfolding the parts of which it consists. He, the First Cause, 
is beheld descending through a prolonged and complicated se- 
ries of dependent causes and their effects. 

Now, in order that man may feel the force of this syllogistic 



PROGRESSION. 



75 



reasoning, he must be prepared to admit the truth of the pri- 
mary proposition. Equally with the Divine Mind, the human 
mind must presuppose the primary principle on which all its 
subsequent reasoning depends- " If you will be at the pains, 
(says Dr. Whately*) carefully to analyze the simplest descrip- 
tion you hear of any transaction or state of things, you will 
find that the process which almost invariably takes place is, in 
logical language, this : that each individual has in his mind cer- 
tain major premises or principles relative to the subject in ques- 
tion ; that observation of what actually presents itself to the 
senses, supplies minor premises ; — and that the statement given 
(and which is reported as a thing experienced) consists, in fact, 
of the conclusions draw^n from the combinations of these pre- 
mises." In the gi-eat argument of which we are treating, the 
major premises consists of primary truths, and of the proposi- 
tions which they evidently involve, and to which they necessa- 
rily lead. And these, I repeat, as they necessarily exist in the 
mind of the Infinite Reason, must exist also in the minds of the 
beings with whom He is reasoning. 

For example ; the creation, we have seen, is a sublime argu- 
ment on the Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness of God. Let 
us imagine that the first, on Power or Causation, is about to be 
commenced. The theatre is boundless space. The instruments 
of proof are symbols. The first effect is, by supposition, yet 
to be produced ; and the design of its production is to convince 
a coming race of intelligent beings that as there is no effect 
without a cause, the impending production will imply a Great 
First Cause. Accordingly, He calls for a universe of matter, 
distributes it into systems, and puts them into motion. But 
here the major proposition, that every phenomenon supposes a 
cause, is assumed by the Great Reasoner himself; it could not 
be otherwise. Unless the intelUgent creature, then, assume the 
major premiss also, what will the production of a universe 
of effects avail? — he will want the link essential to connect 
the creation with the Creator. But suppose the human mind 
to assume this principle in common with the Divine Mind, and 
the syllogism may be made complete — the argument irrefrag- 
able. For, if every phenomenon supposes a cause, and if the 
W'orld be a phenomenon, the existence of the world demon- 
strates the existence of an adequate and independent cause. 
And thus we see the nature and necessity of the deductive 

* Polit. Econ., p. 76. 



76 



MAX. 



process — from the universal to the particular, included un- 
der it. 

34. Induction. But besides the necessary truth which crea- 
tion presupposes, and which truth is assumed alike by the Infi- 
nite Mind and the finite mind, the great argument implies (as 
in every instance of ordinary reasoning,) that there are certain 
ideas in the Mind of the former, which are not as yet in the 
mind of the latter, and which it is the design of the argument 
to convey. An analysis of the following syllogism will illustrate 
our meaning, and show the distinctive nature and necessity of 
the Inductive process. — Whatever exhibits marks of design 
must have had an intelligent author; the world exhibits marks 
of design; therefore, the world must have had an intelligent 
author. Here, the major is a primary fact, assumed alike by 
God and man ; while the Conclusion, — that the world must 
have had an intelligent author, together with all the various 
and important truths which it involves — constitutes that which 
God and man have not at first in common ; that which is sup- 
posed to be primarily in the mind of God alone ; and which it 
is the chief design of the Great Argument to convey into the 
mind of man also. But it must be obvious that the truth of the 
Conclusion, and the attainment of the knowledge contained in 
it, depend on the truth and validity of the minor — namely, that 
the world does exhibit marks of design. How is this proposi- 
tion arrived at ? — How, but by Induction ? It is a generalized 
conclusion drawn from the observation and comparison of a 
number of particular facts. And, then, with this conclusion so 
arrived at, we are further warranted to infer, by virtue of the 
major already assumed, that the world must have had an intel- 
ligent author. 

35. This representation of the distinctive difference between 
the deductive and the inductive processes, is only coincident 
with the other distinctions of truth which we have indicated. 
As a fact is Necessary, it is, and must be seen by intuition^ or 
it could not be seen at all. Demonstration is only a series of 
intuitions, or the development of a primary intuition ; so that 
demonstration is based on intuition, and always presupposes 
it.* But as far as facts are contingent, they admit of an 
indefinite variety of modification and combination, so that any 
one principle which they involve can be drawn out and substan- 
tiated only from an induction of many f^cts. As the Necessary 



* See Locke's Essays, B. IV. c. ii. § 7. 



mOGRESSION. 77 

is synthetic, it requires to be analyzed into particulars ; as the 
Contingent is ^ar^.'c?<7«r, its parts require to be collected or syn- 
thetically generalized. As the Necessary is the logical ardecedent 
to the contingent, it places the human mind, in effect, in the po- 
sition of regarding creation as yet to come — looking down from 
principles to the exemplification of those principles in appropri- 
ate objects and events. As the Contingent is the chronological 
antecedent of the necessary — i. e., that in which the necessary 
is given to the human mind, it places the mind in the reverse 
position, that of looking up from facts to principles. 

36. So that, in this respect, the process of Nature, taken as 
a whole, and the inductive process of man are inverse. Nature 
reasons deductively, from principles to facts. Man meets her 
by reasoning inductively, from facts to principles. Hence the 
aphorism of lord Bacon, " Wliat is first to nature is not first 
to man." Nature begins with causes which produce effects; 
the senses open upon the effects, and from them ascend to the 
causes. In this respect, too — as applied to the great historic 
fact of creation — the position of the Peripatetic, though often 
questioned, may be maintained, that " syllogism is naturally 
prior in order to induction." For, as Nature — i. e. the God of 
Nature descends from the universal to the particular ; and as it 
is not until this is done, that man can ascend from the particular 
to the general, and from the general to the universal, it follows 
that nature and man proceed inversely — that induction is first 
to man, syllogism first to nature : or, where less than induction 
from many facts is necessary — where, as in pure mathematical 
reasoning, a single fact is sufiicient, still that single fact is the 
chronological antecedent to man, while the primary principle 
which it presupposes is first to nature. 

37. The different kinds of evidence have been named already. 
The remarks immediately preceding may have suggested the 
important fact that evidence admits of degrees. This graduation 
may be described as ranging from evidence of the barely pos- 
sible, through the doubtful, the probable, the morally certain, the 
physically certain, to the metaphysically certain. As the last 
alone possesses the characteristics of universality and necessity, 
and, as such, is fixed, the others belong to the domain of the 
inductive understanding, and rise in value in proportion as they 
approach an idea or behef of the reason, and derive authority 
from it. 

38. Among the consequences inferable, especially from our 
remarks mider the head of deduction and induction, one is, 

7* 



78 MAN, 

that man in retracing the steps of material nature, will come 
nearer, at every ascending stage of his inquiries, to the region 
of mathematical truth. A fact which illustrates Bacon's pro- 
position,* that " all natural inquiries succeed best, when a phy- 
sical principle is made to terminate in a mathematical opera- 
tion." For, in proportion as man returns to the inorganic 
forms, and forces, and elementary principles, which character- 
ized the first stage of the Divine Manifestation, he is approach- 
ing the region of purely intellectual truth. 

39. It follows, also, that in proportion as man reascends, he 
will find nature becoming more and more simple, and the prin- 
ciples of nature fewer and more general. Accordingly, " as 
philosophy advances, the properties of matter are found to be 
fewer and simpler ; which the Creative Wisdom so combines 
and directs as to produce the most diversified, and, at first sight, 
opposite results." And this fact admirably harmonizes with 
the progressive character of Creation ; in which we have seen 
Wisdom combining the productions of power, and Goodness 
taking the results of both, and further complicating them for 
her own advanced purposes. In the light of this truth, we can 
interpret and quahfy that remark of Laplace, in which a fatal 
heresy has been supposed, and perhaps justly supposed, to lurk 
— that, as science advances from point to point, Jinal causes 
recede before it, and disappear one after the other. If we re- 
gard Creation as the progressive development of a Divine 
Manifestation, the fact is explained ; man is receding from final 
causes ; for, in returning towards the first stage of that process, 
we are necessarily leaving a final cause behind us at every 
step. The progress of science is retrogressive to nature. K 
we read Euclid backwards, and leave a problem behind us at 
every page, we shall at length reach the postulates and axioms 
of the first page, on which all the book depends. But who 
would, on this account, withhold his admiration from the intel- 
lect and design displayed in the subsequent development of 
those axioms ? And who that glances at the subtle, complica- 
ted, endless appUcation, of even mathematical laws to the great 
system of external nature, but must feel his amazement aug- 
mented in exact proportion as he contrasts the generality of 
these laws -with the inexhaustible particularity of their applica- 
tion, and the variety of their results. 

40. It may be expected, also, that in proportion as man 

* Nor. Org. lib. iii 



PROGRESSIOK, 79 

ascends nearer to the region of necessary truth, he will find 
himself drawing nearer to the Great Reason and Principle of 
the AVhole. " Every true step in this philosophy," says New- 
ton,* " brings us not immediately to the knowledge of the First 
Cause, yet it' brings us nearer to it, and is on that account to be 
highly valued." And because the course of human inquiry 
thus leads from the particular to the universal, the science of 
universals obtained the name of metaphysics. 

41. It may be further expected that the higher we ascend 
towards the Great Source, and the more general the law on 
which we obtain a footing, the greater will become our power 
of deductive reasoning and prophetic anticipation. " In particu- 
lars our knowdedge begins, and so spreads itself by degrees to 
generals ; though afterwards the mind takes the quite contrary 
course, and having drawn its knowledge into as general propo- 
sitions as it can, makes those familiar to its thoughts, and accus- 
toms itself to have recourse to them, as to the standards of truth 
and falsehood." t And all reasoning in natural philosophy, 
says Bacon,! " is ascendant and descendant, from experiments 
to axioms, and from axioms to new discoveries." Accordingly, 
science is now regarded as having reached that height from 
which the Deductive method is henceforth to predominate. 
Without becoming less inductive, only less experimental, the 
tendency of all sciences is to acquire an ever-enlarging deductive 
power. " A revolution is peaceably and progressively effecting 
itself in philosophy, the reverse of that to which Bacon has 
attached his name ; " (and, it might be added, in consequence 
of that,) " that great man changed the method of the sciences 
from deductive to experimental, and it is now rapidly reverting 
from experimental to deductive." § 

42. In these sections on man considered as an intellectual 
being, or as constituted to know creation as a manifestation of 
the Deity, w^e have regarded him as endowed with the three- 
fold power of sensational perception, of reflective understanding, 
and of rational ideas or primary beliefs. By the first, we have 
found him made cognizant of the separate objects and events of 
external nature ; by the second, capable of tracing the relations 
of these objects and events to each other and to himself; and 
by the third, of referring both himself and nature to that all- 

* Optics, Query 28, p. 34. t Locke's Essays, B. iv. c. 7, § 2. 

X Nov. Org. Ub. i. aph. 104, and De Augm. Scient., lib. iii. cap. 3. 
§ Mill's System of Logic, vol. i. p. 579. 



80 MAN\ 

comprehending Personal Reason in whom Truth and feeing are 
one and infinitely perfect — the Eternal God. The first dis- 
closes to him an external and material universe ; but in doing 
so, reveals and presupposes the second, or that reflective power 
which, as directly subservient to the wall, distinguishes the finite 
mind ; while both presuppose and point to their Infinite Author, 
Grod : thus indicating the three great elements of human know- 
ledge — nature, man, and God. The first we have spoken of 
as conversant with facts wdiich are merely conditional or contin- 
gent ; the second, or the conceptive understanding, receives 
these, and brings them under laws which are conditionally ne- 
cessary, its occupation consisting in discovering and generaliz- 
ing the relations of the conditional to the necessary ; and the 
third, as the utterer of necessary truths, guiding the operations 
of the understanding, and authenticating its legitimate conclu- 
sions. Reason, therefore, is to be regarded strictly as giving us 
Philosophy, being simply conversant with principles ; the un- 
derstanding gives us Science, but only as it succeeds in reducing 
phenomena under the principles of reason ; the phenomena or 
materials of the science being supplied primarily by the senses. 
As to their respective methods, reason gives us the Deductive, 
by which we proceed from the universal to the particular ; the 
understanding is inductive, proceeding from the particular to the 
general ; while sense gives the experimental particular itself, 
proceeding only by single and separate steps. When viewed in 
relation to Evidence, then, reason alone is conversant with the 
metaphysically certain ; while the understanding supplies the 
physically and conditionally certain, and all that lies between it 
and the single notices of sensational perception. Regarded in 
this light, sensational perception may be described as related to 
that which is, or the material existent ; the conceptive under- 
standing, presupposing that which is, starts in its inquiries from 
that which may be, or the probable, and ever aims at the goal 
of certainty ; wliile the pecuhar province of the reason is that 
which must be, or the necessary. 

43. And as we have advanced in our investigation of man's 
intelle(toal constitution, we have found it answering to and ful- 
filling the various conditions necessary to his knowledge of cre- 
ation as a manifestation of Deity. From the whole of which, 
it may be concluded that, to God the entire process of Divine 
disclosure is, in eflfect, a sublime syllogism ; of which, the least 
object, and the remotest event, are already included in the ma- 
jor premiss ; and the unfolding of which is destined to occupy 



PROGRESSION. 81 

the coining eternity. While man, appointed to find the sphere 
of his activity in the vast intermediate space between the Neces- 
sary and the purely Conditional, and unable to find intellectual 
rest but in the felt junction of the two, will derive perpetual 
accessions of enjoyment as he ascends from the particular to the 
Infinite, with whom it originated, and in whom it is contained ; 
and will be furnished, as the great process of the manifestation 
advances from stage to stage, with ever fresh occasion for the 
adoring exclamation, " Of Him, and to Him, and through Him, 
are ail things ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." 



Sect. IV. — Imagination. 

1. If the actual creation, as known to man through perception, 
understanding, and reason, have not exhausted the Divine re- 
sources, and if it would both exalt his nature and enhance his 
conceptions of those resources, to be able to imagine phenomena 
harmonizing with, but superior to, all belonging to the present 
and the actual, he may be expected to be endowed with a power 
distinct from any we have yet described, in order to enable him 
to realize such impossibihties. 

2. Now that the universe, as apprehended at any one time, is 
not the measure, but only a specimen, of the creative resources 
of the Deity, is evident, both from his infinity, which cannot be 
exhausted, and from the fact that the actual creation itself is 
perpetually assuming new forms, and repeating its demands on 
those resources. Besides which, if parts, at least, of this crea- 
tion are destined for other worlds, and for unending duration, 
that which is known of the Divine Resources at any one point 
of duration can bear no proportion to that which remains to be 
known, and which only awaits the enlargement of our capacity 
in order to be revealed. It is, therefore, unnecessary for us 
now to inquire whether, when the actual universe was called 
into being, there were not also present to the Divine mind the 
archetypes or ideas of other worlds — possible creations, and 
possible varieties of actual existence. It is enough for us to 
know that there was present to the Creator, because dependent 
on His purpose, all the philosophy, science, and art, which the 
actual universe embodies and illustrates. To Him were pres- 
ent — for He actually designed them — all the artistic applica- 
tions, the aesthetic combinations, and the kindling suggestive 
power of which the natural would be found capable, when sub- 



82 MAN. 

mitted to the action of the human mind, as He proposed to 
endow it, as well as all the ideal phenomena of that mind 
itself. 

3. What, then, is the nature of that mysterious endowment 
by which man is thus admitted to hold intellectual fellowship 
with his- Maker respecting the possible ? It is allied indirectly 
to the sensational part of our nature ; deriving its name from 
the organ of sight through which its principal, though by no 
means its only, materials, are supplied; and, if it expresses 
itself in art, taking pre-existing materials as the means by 
which to attain its ends. In various respects it is identical 
with the understanding. As an artist, it can work only ac- 
cording to the constitution of the material with, and on which, 
it works. That material itself is the production of the Great 
Artist, and has laws and properties of its own ; and it is only 
as the imagination complies with them that they become its 
servant ; and, like the understanding, it abstracts only that it 
may generalize, and generalizes only that it may abstract again. 
In conformity with the reason, also, imagination has its primor- 
dial truth ; its idea is perfection — the loftiest attributes appro- 
priate to the nature of the object which it contemplates. 

4. But from each of these characteristics of the mind, imagi- 
nation is easily distinguished. It looks on material forms only 
to transform them — to imprint on them images, and to apply 
them to purposes, unknown before. To the eye of imagination, 
nature is a great system of symbols, each containing and con- 
cealing a hidden truth yearning for sympathetic interpretation. 
Inorganic nature Kves and breathes, and becomes oracular, in 
fable, emblem, or hieroglyph. Free of all time and space, 
imagination brings together beings the most widely separated, 
and has unities of its own. But its highest prerogative is, in a 
secondary sense, to create. The real creations by which it 
finds itself surrounded in nature, appeal, as divine provocatives, 
to its own ideas of order, beauty, and sublimity. Under its 
plastic hand, the shapeless marble takes a godlike form, and 
comes forth a Venus di Medici, or an Apollo Belvedere. To 
its pencil, ordinary colors become " colors dipt in heaven," and 
a corresponding Transfiguration forthwith glows, and inspires 
devotion. Out of che common air, it modulates strains to 
" raise a mortal to the skies," or to " draw an angel down." If 
it beautifies the earth, it aims at new Edens, and gardens of the 
Hesperides, Castalian springs, and golden fruits, and amaranth- 
ine flowers. If it governs, its domains lie far away — the City 



PROGRESSION. 



83 



of the Sun, or Utopia, or Oceana, or the New Atlantis — and 
are exempt from all the defects of the world's known statesman- 
ship. To its lofty sense, the created universe is one Poem — 
God's grand Epic — and as the solemn recital proceeds, imagi- 
nation essays, with trembHng hand, to write down, if but an 
episode, a Hne, that all time may read. Not that it is ever satis- 
lied with its own productions. The finest materials with which it 
works are too coarse and intractable. Even after its most suc- 
cessful efforts, its cherished vision remains unrevealed ; it car- 
ries about with it an unrealized idea. 

5. We have said that the imagination, like the understanding, 
abstracts and generalizes. But, unlike that faculty, it modifies 
our conceptions, recombines them on principles of its own, or, 
abstracting a single element, dispenses with the rest as irrele- 
vant to its creative purpose. It aims not, like the understand- 
ing, at the conviction which results from evidence, but at the 
emotion which flows from sympathy. And, beyond this, it is, 
in the highest sense, synthetic. Its productions are brought 
forth before the theory which accounts for and explains them. 
Homer, and the great classic dramatists, precede Aristotle. 
The highest criticism is but an exposition of laws already syn- 
thesized in the great works of genius. Like the sciences them- 
selves, the productions of genius are found to be based on fun- 
damental principles. But the imagination does not wait for the 
theory of these principles. It silently and unconsciously em- 
bodies them. And when, subsequently, its productions are ana- 
lyzed, the logic of genius and of nature are found to be the same. 
Sublimity and truth are one. 

6. This latent amenableness of the imagination to the 
majesty of law, distinguishes it from the mere play of fancy 
with which it is often confounded. The former is the great 
tidal wave obeying a planetary impulse, while the latter is only 
the ripple and wave of the surface occasioned by the action of 
the air. And the ground of this difference appears to be, that 
it is the province of imagination to realize the ideal, while 
fancy only adorns and ideahzes the real : the former symbol- 
izes the essences of things, while the latter only beautifies the 
actual. 

7. We have seen that, like the reason, and rooted in it, im- 
agination is synthetic. But while the reason finds its necessary 
truths affirmed and expounded by the objects and events of the 
existing universe, it is the high prerogative of the imagination 
to illustrate the same truths by additional ideal creations. If 



84 MAN. 

the reason points in the direction of that which must be, the 
imagination points in addition, and for the same end, to that 
which might be. In feeble, but yet loyal imitation of Him 
whose universe is but a varied utterance of the beautiful and 
the sublime, symbolical of the true, the imagination comes after 
and essays to take possession of every unoccupied spot with 
new and congenial varieties of its own. And thus it may be 
regarded as the mediating power between the necessary and the 
already existent, adding its own little copy of a creation-week 
to the six days work of the Divine Creator, and showing, that 
if He chose to pause at a given point of the great process, it 
was not because the archetypes of things were all embodied and 
exhausted, but, as one reason, because He willed not to commit 
to unconscious matter the representation of all imaginable ideas, 
but to reserve for a creature made, in this respect, in His own 
image, the conscious representation of certain archetypes left 
unembodied, and thus to be ever carrying onwards the process 
of the Divine manifestation. 

8. But the province of the imagination is far from being 
restricted to the possible in nature and in the intellectual world. 
Its influence variously affects the emotions, the will, and the 
conscience. What Bacon hath finely said of poetry* as a 
daughter of imagination, may be justly affirmed of the imagina- 
tion itself. " There is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more 
ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute 
variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, 
because the acts or events of true history have not that magni- 
tude which satisfieth the mind of man. Poesy feigneth acts and 
events greater and more heroical ; because true history pro- 
poundeth successes and issues of action not so agreeable to the 
merits of virtue and vice, therefore Poesy feigns them more just 
in retribution, and more according to revealed Providence. 
And therefore it was even thought to have some participation of 
divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by sub- 
mitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind." In the 
hght of these views, we see the truth of the affirmation, that 
"poetry is more philosophical than history." f Clearing the 
bounds of the particular and the actual, imagination beholds 
things already in their unity and completeness. It is a power- 
ful auxiliary to every motive drawn from the remote and the 
invisible, antedating the final day, and placing even now the 

* De Augm. Scicnt., lib. ii. cap. 13. t Aristot. de Poet. cap. 9. 



PKOGRESSION. 85 

whip of scorpions in tlie hands of I'eniorse, and the aureola 
around the head of suffering virtue. Ilov^'ever strong the 
Christian's conviction, on independent grounds, of a heavenly 
state, yet it is on the wings of imagination that he ascends and 
foretiistes its blessedness. However bright and expanded the 
prospect of human improvement in the present state may be, it 
is as nothing compared with the interminable career of glory 
which stretches before the eye of imagination in worlds beyond. 
Rich, then, as we should have regarded the newly-created man, 
could we have looked on him when first he stood forth as heir 
of the world, how incomparably more opulent was he as the 
heir of things which he could then, at best, only imagine : the 
one, measurable, passing ; the other, it hath not yet entered even 
into his mind fully to conceive. By the former, God manifested 
himself to man indirectly, and from without ; by the latter, God 
directly mirrored himself, however partially and faintly, in the 
mind itself, and man beholds his Maker in the image.. 



Sect. Y. — Man Emotional. 

1. In the view which we have taken of man's mental consti- 
tution, we have found him endowed with the means of intellect- 
ually interpreting the Divine manifestation ; but how are these 
means to be put and kept in activity so as to secure their end ? 
PoHshed and capacious as the mirror of his mind may be, and 
capable of reflecting every object and hue that passes before it, 
is it, like a mirror, to be stationary and passive while the uni- 
verse revolves around it, and to reflect every object alike with 
cold and mirror-like indifference ? For, if he is actively to em- 
ploy his knowing faculties as means of knowledge, and if, as ex- 
ternal and internal phenomena differ in their character and im- 
portance, he is to estimate them accordingly, he must be en- 
dowed with a corresponding variety^of susceptibilities. In other 
words — 

2. If the various and complicated phenomena of matter and 
mind with the existence of which man has the means of becom- 
ing acquainted, be to be studied and appreciated, as means of 
Divine manifestation, he must possess the susceptibility of being 
moved and affected by them, in a manner answering both to 
their positive character and importance, and to the relation in 
which he stands to them. 

3. This is the susceptibihty of emotion ; a term originally de- 

8 



86 



MAN. 



noting, perhaps, a movement from within, or the poAver of the 
mind to affect the body externally. Not that this is the neces- 
sary effect of emotion, for the mental affection may be too placid 
to produce any external sign, or be so powerful and deep as to 
leave the material surface, like the centre circle of a whirlpool, 
unruffled. As an original and underived part of our nature, it 
admits not of description to him who is not already conscious of 
it. All that we can do is to point out Avhat it is not, or wherein 
it differs from those parts of our nature with which we are most 
liable to confound it, and to indicate the circumstances in which 
it arises, and thus to clear and authenticate our conception of 
what it truly is. 

4. In contradistinction from the appetites, such as hunger and 
thirst, which are bodily, and which have their immediate origin 
in the body, an emotion is an affection of the mind. The for- 
mer relate directly and entirely to external and material objects ; 
the latter relates immediately to internal states, for even when 
traceable to external objects, its relation to them is only indirect, 
or through the medium of perception. 

Sensation depends on organs of sense, and is directly related 
to external objects, for it is occasioned by their presence ; emo- 
tion depends not directly on such organs, but on the sensations 
themselves, and on the intellectual states which follow. 

An intellectual act or state has none of the vivid feeling which 
belongs to an emotion ; and differs from it as remembering an 
object differs from the love or hatred of an object remembered. 
The former is the antecedent of the latter ; and we can con- 
ceive of a being so constituted as that the intellectual act might 
have existed without the emotion. 

We may further remark that Affection for an object denotes 
the tendency of the mind to have emotions of a certain class 
awakened by it, the actual repetition of such emotions, and also 
the state or habit of the mind resulting from such repetition. 
Sensibility implies a highly emotional tendency, or a great sus- 
ceptibility to emotional appeals. By Taste is meant disciplined 
sensibility, or sensibility rendered discriminating by emotional 
experience, and therefore as prompt in its decisions as the emo- 
tions themselves. Properly speaking, perhaps, the objects of 
taste are inanimate, while affection embraces sentient being. 
Passion expresses the violence of an emotion, or an affection ; 
and hence it is not unfrequently employed as a synonyme for 
anger, that brevis furor, and most raging of the passions. Tem- 
perament denotes, not emotion itself, but a characteristic mental 



PROGRESSION. - 87 

susceptibility, predisposing the mind to certain classes of emo- 
tion. Tlius, a mind constitutionally grave or gay, melancholy 
or cheerful, is peculiarly susceptible to corresponding emotions 
of gloom or joy. 

0. As man exists for an end, and his constitution is the ap- 
pointment of means to that end, it may be expected, first, that 
he will be the subject of different kinds of emotion in harmony 
with the attainment of that end. Now this requirement appears 
to involve the following facts, each of which may be regarded 
as a classifying law of the emotions. 

(1.) The appropriative. That everything conducive to the 
end of his being, and capable of being obtained by him, should 
be regarded by him as an object of desire. Thus, as the very 
end for which life is bestowed on him at all supposes the con- 
tinuance of life, at least, for a time, he Is the subject of an in- 
stinctive desire for its continued existence. And innumerable 
external objects are ever appealing to the desire and keeping it 
in play. 

6. The continuance of life, as well as its design, imply that 
he is meant for activity. He desires it — desires it even for its 
own sake as well as for its practical results ; for it is attended 
with feelings of pleasure which may easily be kindled to cheer- 
fulness and delight. And external nature, even in Eden, was 
calculated to call forth his activity ; for he had " to dress it and 
to keep it." 

7. Do the constitution of man, as far as we have studied it, 
and the design of that constitution, suppose a thirst for know- 
ledge ? This desire is evinced by the infant even before he pos- 
sesses the power of uttering it ; nor is there any emotion whose 
influence is later felt. It observes an order of development ac- 
cording to the order of our wants. Beginning in childish curi- 
osity, it passes through all the intermediate stages of inquiry, to 
a profound and far-sighted philosophy ; and when stopped by 
any objects short of ultimate facts, it feels as if it had a right to 
know them, and evinces increasing restlessness and resentment 
at the obstacles, till it is gratified. So ardent and instinctive is 
our desire for knowledge, that the pursuit is commenced for its 
own sake alone, and respecting objects which may never come 
into our possession. The only reason we can assign for insti- 
tuting most of our inquiries, is because the subjects to which 
they relate are new and unknown to us. And, as we advance, 
the desire which impels us onwards, the pleasure which attends 
the perception of progress, and the dehght resulting from sue- 



88 MAX. 

cess, and from the direct contemplation of the truth sought, — 
all show that the mind was made for knowledge. Besides 
which, it will be found that the mind is ever systematizing the 
knowledge acquired, and reducing it to unity, so as to make it 
more securely its own. 

8. The creation of a second human mind, endowed with the 
power of expressing itself through the medium of speech, greatly 
increased the means of knowledge. By this arrangement, the 
horizon of external nature was indefinitely extended and en- 
riched, for, in addition to the wide range of the material crea- 
tion, the individual mind is now supposed to enjoy access to the 
wider region and the richer phenomena of another mind. The 
desire of man for knowledge, then, if no other reason, prepares 
us to expect that he will be found desirous of communion with 
other minds. Accordingly, society is desired, as soon as ever 
the mind can form a conception of it ; desired, as if it were es- 
sential to the diversity, enlargement, and completion of one's 
own being. The Creator himself pronounced solitude to be un- 
desirable, gave a companion to man, and promised the indefinite 
multiplication of the species. 

9. But will not a certain amount of power furnish the means 
of gratifying all the other desires, and of thus answering the end 
of existence ? Accordingly, man is made capable of enjoying 
power for its own sake, and of desiring all that contributes 
to it. Dominion over animate and inanimate nature is his birth- 
right, and he finds and imparts a measure of happiness and 
improvement in the exercise of it. The desire of property, 
associated with the feeling of right in it, and over it, is an 
inherent and essential part of our nature. Equally inherent 
and indestructible is the desire of superiority, for, as we shall 
hereafter see, whether he w^ho attains the object of his desire 
intentionally exercises it as an instrument of power or not, it 
invests him with a transforming influence, over all those by 
whom it is recognized. 

10. Still further would the end of his being appear to be 
answered, if he act in a manner worthy of the esteem and appro- 
bation of others. Creation is made to be appreciated ; the 
human mind forms the most important part of creation ; but he 
can understand and appreciate the mind of another, only in 
proportion as he communes and sympathizes with it. To dis- 
regard it, or to be insensible to it, would be, in effect, to lose a 
world of knowledge, influence, and enjoyment : to appreciate it, 
and to act consistently with that appreciation, is to make that 



PROGRESSION. 89 

world, to a great extent, his own. Hence, man is found sus- 
ceptible of the desire of approbation, even before he is capable 
of understanding, and when he is not considering, its practical 
effects. Many of the deeds by which he diffuses happiness 
around him, are traceable to this source. The hour which saw 
the "woman take of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil, and give also to her husband with her and he did 
eat," beheld an illustration of this desire, and perhaps, indeed, 
of all the desires we have specified; reminding us, that the 
desires in themselves are destitute of a moral character ; for, in 
order to their morality they must be placed in alliance with 
a principle which we have not as yet considered ; so that 
much which passes for morahty is merely the result of instinc- 
tive emotion. 

11. (2.) Impartative. That besides being susceptible of 
desires relative to everything apparently conducive to his own 
well-being, he will be found capable of being moved by, or 
affected towards other objects in a manner conducive to their 
well-being. This is implied in the general proposition ; for, if 
other beings are susceptible of desires as well as himself, and if 
everything has ends of its owti, subordinate to the great End, 
as w^ell as himself, these desires and ends form a part of the 
phenomena by which he is to be suitably affected. The same 
is implied in his being capable of desiring the good will oF 
others ; for this supposes an identity of nature, or, at least, so 
great a measure of identity, as that he knows what will secure 
their good will ; and therefore, that he will respect their desires 
in order to it. It is implied also in his desire of personal well- 
being ; for the continuance and well-being of other things are 
essential to it. And the same is presupposed by the great End 
which everything is designed to promote ; for how could that be 
attained, except by the continuance in well-being, or by the con- 
ditional restoration, of all the means necessary to it ? We are 
only saying, then, that the being who is to appreciate the means 
of Divine manifestation, may be expected to be affected towards 
them, in a manner tending, not to their destruction, but to their 
continuance and employment ; and consistently with the fact 
that he himself is a part, and only a part, of the great system 
of means. 

12. Now as the individual man is instinctively desirous of 
continued existence, he carries about with him a memorial that 
other beings have the same instinctive desire; and as the 
implantation of the desire in his own breast presupposes that 

8* 



90 MAN. 

every object without him will be found to respect and corres 
pond Avith that desire, the existence of the same desire in others 
equally presupposes that everything which is external to them, 
and therefore including himself, will also respect, and be moved 
in a manner corresponding with their desires. Now this is the 
basis of the sentiment of Justice. And this feeling of respect 
for the desires of others relating to whatever may be essential 
to their existence, is found to be an original part of human 
nature. With the question of the derangement or perversion 
of this or of any other part of our nature, by sin, we have not 
as yet to do. It is sufficient for us, at present, to find that there 
is implanted in man a sentiment which prompts him, without 
reference to anything except the impulsive emotion itself, con- 
ditionally to respect the desires of others. 

13. As his owTi desire of activity implies scope and freedom, 
as far as others are concerned, for its exercise, the same desire 
in them implies, as far as he is concerned, similar scope and 
Uherty. Accordingly, he is originally predisposed to concede 
it, and to derive pleasure from the contemplation of it. 

14. The correlate to the desire of obtaining knowledge is a 
disposition to impart it. The desire, -^Ndthout the correspond- 
ing disposition, would be a contradiction, and a source of 
misery. But the constitution of thmgs is open to no such an 
impeachment. The communicative disposition is found to be 
quite as strong as the appropriating desire. And even he who 
might appear to be acquii'ing knowledge under the influence of 
no such an incentive, will be commonly found to be already 
enjoying, by anticipation, the moment when he shall be impart- 
ing it, and holding converse with other minds. 

15. The correlate to the desire of society is a disposition to 
seek associates. By the former, man would have others come 
to him ; by the latter, he is equally prompted to go to them. 
The former alone, not meeting with any response from wdthout, 
would leave mankind in a state of mdividual isolation, each 
desiring that which there was no disposition in the others to 
grant. The latter alone would, as by a centripetal force, blend 
all the race into a single mass, and thus make the existence of 
distmct communities impossible. Now the disposition to asso- 
ciate is evinced by man in every stage of life, and thus he is 
constitutionally prepared to meet and gratify the corresponding 
desire of society existing in others. The various modifications 
of this disposition account partly for the various kinds of attach- 
ments or affection existing in society. 



PROGRESSION. 



91 



16. The desire of power co-exists with a disposition to con- 
ditional concession and subordination. Indeed the presence 
of such a disposition in the individual is presupposed in the bare 
existence of society. Even the co-existence of matter implies 
a law of physical subordination. And, that society could not 
exist without an analogous law is evident ; for if every member 
were unconditionally independent of every other, each would be 
separate, as well as distinct, from all. Mutual improvement 
would in that case be impossible ; for where there is no suscep- 
tibility of being moved by a superior power, there can be no 
change. But man possesses this susceptibility ; evinces a pre- 
disposition to fall into an order with others ; instinctively aims 
to augment his own individual power by conditionally surren- 
dering a portion of it to be combined with a higher power, and 
thus to find a unity in plurality, to combine individual distinct- 
ness with social identity. 

17. The desire of esteem co-exists with a disposition to ap- 
prove whatever appears to be estimable in others. Beautifully 
is the correspondence of these susceptibilities displayed in the 
fact that the emotion itself is, in each instance, the special ob- 
ject contemplated, and is all that is souglit after. Let one party 
evince a desire for the esteem of another, though it be ex- 
pressed only by a look, unaccompanied by a single act, and let 
the other only look approval in return, and the object of each 
is gained. The desire of esteem on the one side may be ex- 
pressed by an act which, apart from that evident desire, would 
have excited displeasure ; and the approving emotion, on the 
other, may be similarly expressed ; but, in each case, the motive 
is felt to be everything. The communion which has taken 
place between the parties is a communion of emotions, and 
these have a language, and a precious value, peculiar to them- 
selves. 

18. (3.) Arrestive. As man is introduced into a system 
indefinitely vast, and as his knowledge will consequently ever 
fall far within the circle of its objects, he will be frequently 
meeting, both as an individual and as a race, with what is new 
and unexpected. It may be anticipated, then, that he will be 
endowed with cautionary and arresting susceptibilities answer- 
ing to such situations. Accordingly, he is found capable of the 
emotions of surprise, astonishment, wonder, admiration, awe. 
Many of the objects, indeed, which awaken these emotions, 
when they come to be known, excite the additional emotions of 
desire, gratitude, and fear. And hence the wisdom of that Di- 



92 ^rA^^ 

vine arrangement by which, in the presence of strange objects, 
or in novel circumstances, we are led to pause and to examine, 
when heedlessly to have advanced might have been fatal. The 
appearance of anything new, may be regarded as exciting sur- 
prise. When not only the object or occurrence itself is novel, 
but also the circumstances which have led to it are unexpected, 
the mind is astonished. "When both the object or event and the 
circumstances admit of no explanation, the mind is left in a 
state of wonder. The beautiful awakens admiration ; and the 
sublime inspires awe. The consideration of the latter two emo- 
tions properly belongs to another class, to which reference will 
presently be made. They are adverted to here, on account of 
their tendency to arrest the attention, and to awaken reflection. 
The same objects, indeed, may not uniformly excite the emo- 
tions of admiration and awe ; but as often as these emotions 
are excited, even by the same objects, one of their characteris- 
tics is the arresting nature of the feeling which they include. 
Now, by the emotions specified, the mind is engaged to a fur- 
ther consideration of the objects exciting them ; and thus the 
intellect purveys for the emotions, and the emotions react and 
provide subjects of study for the intellect ; the mind and the 
feelings influence each other. 

19. (4.) Perfective. The system to which man belongs is 
not only indefinitely vast, it is progressive, and he himself is an 
intelligent part of it. Accordingly, the mere susceptibility of 
improvement and progress, when perceived, has a tendency to 
awaken in his breast an emotion of complacency involving a 
disposition to encourage and promote it. Still more is the per- 
ception of supposed excellence and happiness calculated to ex- 
cite the feeling. In the absence of every disturbing cause, the 
mere look of gladness in another, falls like sunshine on his oavh 
breast. His heart is an instrument containing a chord for 
every note which happiness knows. And its every true re- 
sponse to the touch of things without, falls in with the music of 
the spheres — is either a note of grief over something other- 
wise than it should be, or of pleasure in instinctive anticipation 
of the final chorus. 

20. Akin to this class, and tending to the same refining and 
ennobling results, are the emotions of beauty and sublimity ; 
emotions which both presuppose the perfect and the infinite, 
and tend to prepare the mind for them. But is the beautiful 
objective or subjective ; is it a quality inhering in the object 
we admire, or is it the reflection of the admiring mind, the 



PROGRESSION. 93 

result of its own associations ? My own conviction is, that the 
writers on this subject have erred in taking it for granted that 
it must be the one or the other exclusively. Granted, that 
where one man sees beauty in a given object, another sees 
none : it does not necessarily follow that therefore all objects are 
equally and entirely destitute of instrinsic beauty ; for what part 
of man's constitution is not liable to perversion ? Granted, on 
the other hand, that there are certain objects or qualities which 
seldom if ever fail to awaken in the mind the emotion of beau- 
ty ; it does not necessarily follow that all beauty is therefore 
entirely objective, and that the mind does not often embellish 
external objects with charms of its own. Admitting, however, 
that beauty is, in some sense, subjective, the question arises 
whether the emotion is original and simple, or whether it is 
resolvable into association. And here again it appears to me 
that the proved existence of a compound emotion by no means 
necessitates the exclusion of an emotion simple and underived. 
A little analysis may be sufficient to show that much of the 
beauty of which the mind is conscious, is of an acquired or 
complex origin. But this appears to be additional to the opera- 
tion of the primitive emotion of beauty, and partly in conse- 
quence of it. The very fact that the mind is found suscepti- 
ble of what may be called associated or suggested beauty, pre- 
supposes, it appears to me, the existence of an original emo- 
tion, as the only condition of its possibiUty. If objects are 
deemed beautiful only as they come to be associated in the 
mind with certain agreeable feelings, it would follow that all 
external objects are beautiful with which agreeable associations 
have been formed. Now there are two considerations which 
seem fatal to this conclusion; first, that although there are 
many things which have had the same opportunity, so to speak, 
of having interesting associations formed with them, as other 
things deemed beautiful have had, yet, by an inherent repulsive- 
ness, they resist the association ; and, also, that many of those 
things with which agreeable associations have been formed are 
yet never employed as images of the beautiful. The mind thus 
intuitively distinguishes between accidental and inherent beauty. 
It seems impossible to conceive of the first man, as created 
without an original emotional susceptibility for the beautiful; 
to suppose that he who was made " in the image of God," the 
objective expression, however faint, of Him, who is the " First 
Fair," should himself be destitute of an original emotion of 
beauty ; that he should have had to discover that he was sur- 



94 MAN. 

rounded bj elements of beauty, even in Eden, only by the slow 
growth of agreeable associations. Surely, the first hour revealed 
to him the fact ; emotion followed emotion originally and in- 
herently agreeable ; the first vision of that new-created loveli- 
ness which appeared in her — ' fairer than all her daughters, 
Eve' — the mother and model of human beauty, could not have 
failed instantly to awaken an admiring and attracting emotion 
independently of all previous agreeable associations, or even if 
no such associations had yet been formed. 

These remarks imply that there is, as has been already inti- 
mated, objective beauty. We do not suppose, indeed, that there 
is anything in the object of the same nature as the emotion, 
any more than we believe that a property identical with our 
sensation of fragrance resides in the rose. But, as our sensa- 
tion of fragrance would not exist unless there were an exciting 
property in the flower, so the emotion of beauty presupposes a 
peculiar element in every object which excites it. It appears 
to me impossible to conceive of the Divine Creator as evolving 
the vast variety of forms and objects in nature, without any ref- 
erence whatever to an ideal standard of beauty. We cannot 
but think of beauty as one of the principles on which the world 
is made. The principle of utility, though often found in combi- 
nation with it, is yet distinct from it. And hence there are ob- 
jects, in which, after we have spoken of them as useful, and 
even as agreeable, we feel that there is another element which 
we can denote only by saying that they are beautiful. The 
same remarks are applicable to the distinct emotion of sublimity, 
which springs from the idea of poAver, and which points to the 
indefinitely vast, and infinite. Both of tliese emotions, by 
detaining the mind in communion with ideal loveliness and 
grandeur, tend to the indefinite improvement and progress of 
the mind. 

21. (5.) Remedial. Our theory supposes not only the pro- 
gress of man, but his possible deterioration. If he is capable 
of being affected towards other objects in a manner conducive 
to their well-being, it may be expected that he will evince ap- 
propriate emotion at the perception of any object which ap- 
pears to have fallen out of the ranks in the onward march 
of creation, and a disposition to restore it to its lost place and 
capabilities. Accordingly, the spectacle, or even the concep- 
tion of an object in a state less happy or less perfect than it 
has been, or than he expected to find it, or than he conceives 
it was meant to be, affects him with compassion for it, involving 



PROGRESSION. 95 

a disposition to relieve or to ameliorate its condition. And the 
emotion is found susceptible of the various modifications of con- 
cern, sorrow, distress, and anguish, answering to the states of 
deprivation, affliction, pain or danger of the objects contem- 
plated. Gratitude is the emotion consequent on the perception 
of a disposition in others to sympathize with, and to aid an ob- 
ject of compassion, or to render to another more than strict jus- 
tice demands, in order to his happiness. 

22. (6.) Relational. The different classes of emotion which 
have been already enumerated give rise" to a subsequent and 
distinct class, dependent on the activity and gratification of 
these primary emotions. For if man may sustain to the ob- 
jects of these emotions, the different relations of anticipation, of 
possession, or of loss, it may be expected, secondly, in accord- 
ance with our general proposition, that he will evince a vary- 
ing susceptibihty of feeling, corresponding with such change of 
relation. 

If, for example, two objects equally desirable are present to 
his mind, but only one of which is attainable, it may be ex- 
pected that he will be impelled towards that object by an emo- 
tion of which he is unconscious in respect to the other. Ac- 
cordingly, the perception of his relation to it awakens the hope, 
the trust, or the confidence of obtaining it. By this benevolent 
provision he is both saved from spending himself in the vain 
pursuit of an unattainable end, and of thus defeating the design 
of his existence ; and is left to put forth his strength in the di- 
rection in which it is likely to be crowned with success. The 
prospect of failure fills the mind with apprehension, anxiety, and 
the various modifications of fear. In the attainment and pos- 
session of the good desired, he is conscious of joy, and of all its 
modifications, contentment, satisfaction, gladness and delight. 
The loss of the object occasions him sorrow. If he lose it by 
his own folly, he is the subject of mortification or remorse. K 
he is deprived of it by the unjust act of another, or if, by such 
an act, even his retention of it be endangered, he evinces an- 
ger, jealousy, indignation, and resentment. 

23. Now, it might, I think, be shown that each of these six 
classes is distinctive, and that there is not a single simple emo- 
tion which might not find an appropriate place under one or 
other of these heads, and, therefore, no compound emotion, the 
elements of which might not be similarly distributed. But if 
this classification be accepted, we shall find that the emotions 
admit of a further generaUzation into those arising from the na- 



96 MAN. 

ture of the mental objects whicli excite them, and those arising 
from a perception of our relation to the objects. The former 
division includes the first five groups we have specified — 
namely, the appropriative, the impartative, the arrestive, the 
progressive or perfective, and the restorative or remedial. The 
latter division includes the emotions of the sixth class — 
namely, those attending the attainableness, the possession, and 
the loss of the objects belonging to the preceding classes. 
This latter division necessarily presupposes the former, on 
which account the two divisions may be designated respectively 
the primary and the secondary ; not, be it observed, as measur- 
ing or comparing their importance, but as simply indicating the 
order of their mutual relation. Further : all the objects and 
emotions of the first division are to be regarded as immediate, 
or as existing without any reference to time. This is true even 
of the desires. To class desire with the prospective emotions 
is to confound it with hope, an emotion of the second division, 
and relating to the attainableness of an object ; whereas, desire, 
like surprise or admiration, knows no future any more than it 
does a past. " It arises from good considered simply," and re- 
spects only the quality of objects. On the other hand, those of 
the secondary division are related to time, for, as attainable or 
unattainable, they respect the future ; as possessed, the present ; 
as lost, the past. Each division alike may be characterized as 
agreeable or disagreeable ; but with this important distinction, 
that while the primary and immediate emotions are essentially 
agreeable or the reverse, the secondary are such only in a rela- 
tive sense. The character of the former is carried over to the 
latter, and determines whether the perception of our relation to 
their objects shall occasion hope or fear, joy or sorrow. 

24. And, further, it is important to remark, as harmonizing 
with our distinction between man as the being to whom, and 
the being to and by whom, the Divine manifestation is made, 
that the division which we have denominated as primary, im- 
mediate, and essentially agreeable, belongs to man as viewed 
in the former light, and that the secondary division is affirm- 
able of him as viewed in the latter respect. It is easy to con- 
ceive of a human being as successively experiencing each class 
of emotions belonging to the former division, and yet remain- 
ing a stranger to hope or fear, to joy or sorrow, in relation to 
any of the specific objects of those classes. As an emotional 
intelligence to whom the creative revelation is made, he con- 
templates objects ; his emotions pronouncing one class of these 



PROGRESSION. 97 

objectf5, good for himself; anotlier class, good for others; a 
third, surprising for their novelt}" ; a fourth, to be admired and 
loved for the presence of certain excellences ; and a fifth, pitia- 
ble on account of the absence of certain qualities or conditions ; 
As an emotional intelligence by whom, partly, as well as to 
whom, the creative revelation is to be made, he is called on not 
merely to appreciate the objective. He himself, the subject 
of such appreciating acts, is placed in organic relation to the 
great scheme, and, in this relation, is to have his own nature 
evolved, in order that it also may be appreciated. Accordingly^ 
the perception of his relation, not merely to the general system,, 
but to every fraction of it, touches an emotional spring of his 
nature harmonizing with his conception of it as attainable, pos- 
sessed, or lost. And thus, while each of these emotional divis- 
ions alike presupposes an intellectual act as its immediate ante- 
cedent, the former, in accordance with the terms of our general 
proposition, respects our appreciation of things, in themselves 
considered ; the latter, our relation to them. 

25. Tift general proposition implies, thirdly^ that man's sus- 
ceptibility of emotion will be found co-exte7isive with his means 
of knowledge, just as these have been found commensurate 
with the means of Divine manifestation. Could w^e point to 
any part, or lay our finger on any object, or name any subject, 
in our world, which never has excited, nor can excite, a human 
emotion, or to which man has no chord of feeling in his nature 
capable of responding, it would be evident that a defect in the 
system of things had at length come to light. Either man's 
nature was relatively incomplete, or else the anomalous object 
which found in him no emotive vibration was not of Divine 
origin — must have proceeded from some discordant mind, or 
have come w^andering hither from some unknown world. But 
such an inconsistency is unknown. Man has the susceptibility 
of being moved by everything within the circle of that creation 
which he has been sent to inhabit, and for the very reason that 
he has been sent to inhabit it expressly to interpret and to 
estimate it aright. In vain should we attempt to enumerate 
the various objects of knowledge which the world contained 
when he first came to be its inhabitant ; but though the task 
would soon set our poor arithmetic at defiance, man brought 
with him the power of responding to the call of each. In vain 
should we try to imagine the diversified groupings, and the 
physical combinations of which these separate objects have 
since then admitted, yet each of these was meant to move. 
9 



U8 MAN. ^ 

How impossible to think of all the events to which they have 
hourly given rise ! yet each of these was calculated to exercise 
a motive-power in man. We are to remember, also, that not 
merely the clear perception of each of these, but every degree 
of perception, every point of the long line between entire igno- 
rance of, and an intimate acquaintance with, each of all these 
objects and events, and their inconceivably numerous combina- 
tions, was calculated to affect the emotive part of man's nature. 
And not only is that nature equal and open to the manifold and 
myriad-voiced appeal, had the whole been brought to bear on a 
single individual, hidden susceptibilities would still have re- 
mained within him, and sources of feeling in reserve for other 
disclosures, and for future periods of his being. 

26. But if such be man's emotional relation to external na- 
ture, how defective must that piety be which makes it a boast 
that it can see little in the entire circle to engage its attention, 
or to yield it delight : how great its loss of enjoyment : how 
sacred the duty of trainmg the mind to an acquain^nce with 
the objects appointed by God to excite our emotions ; how im- 
portant that the heart be kept open and susceptible to all the 
influences designed to act on it ! 

27. Fourthly, it is further implied in the general proposition, 
that the degree in which man will be found susceptible of being 
moved by objects and events, will be regulated by his views of 
their importance, as this, again, depends on the degree of their 
subserviency to the great end. Endowed with this discrimi- 
nating power, every object possesses, in the eye of man's 
emotional nature, a different value. To a superficial observer, 
indeed, the objects of external nature may appear to be thrown 
together like the stars of the midnight sky, in inextricable con- 
fusion. But as among the celestial bodies the astronomer dis- 
tinguishes masses of different magnitudes, and constellations 
of different brightness, so in all our thoughts and reasonings 
on things, no true distinction can exist, no difference of value 
be imagined, which the emotions are not calculated to appre- 
ciate and confirm. While every object of thought exercises 
an influence, the mind is supposed to be affected by each in a 
manner proportioned to its subserviency as a means of Divine 
manifestation. This is the standard of their value in the 
Divine estimation, for this is the very reason of their existence. 
God himself is perpetually energizing every part and particle 
of the entire system, and imprinting on it some property of 
His nature, as a means of self-revelation. It is only, there- 



PROGRESSION. 99 

fore, as every object included in the system, succeeds in im- 
parting or imprinting itself, that it answers the design of its 
being. According to the laws of gravitation, the feather acts 
on the globe, as well as the globe on the feather ; so, in the 
intellectual world, there is nothing so insignificant as not to 
possess some property which represents a Divine perfection, 
and whose office it is not therefore to move the mind according 
to the value of that property in the general scale of things. 
Hence the least objects are ever tending to imprint on the 
greatest their reality and their signature, as well as the greatest 
on the least. But while in this system of mutual dependence 
and influence the least do not fail to affect the greatest, it is to 
be expected that the reason of the existence of each will be 
the principle of its operation, and tliat that which is more per- 
fect will ever be tending to conform that which is less perfect to 
itself In so doing, it is only evolving its own nature, acting in 
harmony with the will of Him who, having endowed it with a 
superior power of Divine manifestation, values it in proportion 
as it answers the end of its existence. 

28. Here, then, is a scale of valuation for all the objects in 
the universe. How important that we should acquire the habit 
of correctly arranging and valuing things accordingly ! How 
many of the fatal errors which occur in the education of the 
young, arise from the oblivion of this rule ; in consequence of 
which means are mistaken for ends, shadows for realities, and 
the body preferred to the mind ! 

How high a place in this scale of valuation would a human 
being be found to occupy! while every other object would 
find a place, he, as the mediate end of all, would stand at their 
head, charged with the collective influences of the whole, the 
great blessing of every circle into which he came. How 
high a place above all other communications should a volume 
of Divine revelations occupy ! If the mutual impartation of 
human thoughts be the great ordinary instrument for moving 
the mind, what emotions may be expected to follow the utterance 
of Divine thoughts ! Hence " the truth " is the means of human 
renovation. Besides the world of natural objects employed to 
move the mind, God has inserted or superadded a more direct 
communication from Himself, has afforded views of a higher 
and a more spiritual economy of things ; and when the heart 
bas been prepared and adjusted to receive the influence which 
the view of this new economy is calculated to exercise, this 
finite subjective is gi-adually brought into harmony with that 



100 MAN. 

infinite objective. Hence, too. the transforming influence of 
prayer, in which the finite subjective is brought into direct 
communication with the Great, the Infinite objective ; and 
what can the effect of that be but to touch every spring in 
human nature, and to put it into activity in harmony with the 
Divine movements ! 

29. Now this view of the manner in which the heart is sup- 
posed to be moved by objects according to their rank or value 
in the scale of Divine manifestation will serve to show the rea- 
sonableness of loving God with all the heart, and soul, and mind, 
and strength ; and how it is that the belief of the truth is essen- 
tial to the understanding of the truth — the love of God to the 
knowledge of God. For the very design of my susceptibihty to 
be moved by an object is that I may be led to attend to it, and 
then to deal with it according to its value. My means of doing 
this, however, would be inconceivably augmented, if the emo- 
tions were subject to laws such as the following — that I should 
have the power of recalling and willing the presence of certain 
objects before the eye of the mind, in order that they might 
give rise to certain emotions ; that I should have the power of 
attending to these objects : that my attention to them should 
have the effect of rendering my perception of them more quick 
and vivid than they would otherwise be ; that while one impres- 
sion lasts, in proportion to its intensity, my mind should be 
incapable of receiving impressions from other objects ; that the 
longer it is under the influence of an object, the deeper should 
be its impression (hence the importance of attention) : that as 
all objects are related, so all emotions should be also. Now 
these and otlier laws exist ; but as they presuppose the activity 
of the power next to be considered — the will — our considera- 
tion of them must be reserved for the next section. 



Sect. VI. — Man Voluntary. 

1. We have found man capable of being moved by every 
object in creation. And as different classes of phenomena are 
of different degrees of importance in the great scheme of the 
Divine procedure, we found him susceptible of corresponding 
differences of emotion. But in all these movements of the 
mind by different classes of objects, we have, so far, been re- 
garding it as passive. For aught that has yet appeared to the 
oontraiy, the man is lying in this respect ai the mercy of phe- 



PKOGRESglON- 101 

nomena over wliich be has no control. Everjtliing is acting 
upon him, but without any power on his part either to resist or 
voluntarily to submit, because without any choice. He, too, 
may be reacting on every object w^ithin a given circle, but only 
as they are acting on him, unconsciously, and by a preordained 
necessity. 

2. The reason and the reasonableness of his being actually 
influenced by the objective universe in a certain manner and in 
a certain degree, are obvious. How^ otherwise, is man to 
sympaihize with his Maker in his appreciation of all that God 
has done for His own manifestation ? When the universe was 
made, it only presented to the Divine Mind the objective dis- 
play of that which, subjectively, He had contemplated from 
eternity. If man, then, is to sympathize with his Maker, in 
this respect, he can do so only by having the objective universe 
as true in its relations and influences to his mental constitution 
as if it w^ere within him. As the idea of the external universe 
was in the mind of God before it was embodied without ; for 
man that universe is first without, in order that it might pro- 
duce the appropriate effect within him. And hence we have 
seen that he is, in some sense, open to all its influences ; that 
everything is calculated to act upon him, directly or indirectly, 
with a motive-power. But this view of external objects acting 
through his sensitive nature, must, we repeat, admit of some 
qualification. In our last chapter, in wdiich we saw the inor- 
ganic, organic, and animal dispensations re-appear in his con- 
stitution, we found him to be a link — the last and the noblest, 
it is true, but still only a continuous link — in the unbroken 
chain and iron mechanism of nature, and formed as necessarily 
out of antecedent materials, and as subject to the antecedent 
laws of cause and effect, as the link which preceded him. And 
for aught that has yet appeared to the contrary, the manifesta- 
tions of his intellectual and of his sensitive nature, are all 
necessary also. 

3. It seems obvious, then, that if man's appreciation of the 
Divine manifestation, and his subserviency to it, are not to be 
necessitated but free, he must be endowed with such a power 
of directly or indirectly reacting on or regulating the emotive 
part of his constitution, as shall render that appreciation and 
subserviency the expression of his unconstrained choice. On 
no other condition can his appreciation of the Divine mani- 
festation be morally pleasing to God, or acceptable even tp 
himself. 

9* 



102 inAjf. 

4, In accordance with this general proposition it may be 
expected, first, that man will be endowed with the power of 
acting according to his will. Here, it may be proper to 
premise that by the Will is meant the powder of volition ; and 
that a Volition, or particular act of the will, immediately pre- 
cedes and determines action. By Motive is intended that which 
immediately precedes and influences volition. 

5. Now that man has the power of acting as he will is a fact 
conceded by all parties. It is a statement susceptible of an 
explanation to which even an ultra-fatalist would readily sub- 
scribe. If this were a full exposition of human freedom, we 
might accept Hobbes's definition of liberty — "the absence of 
all impediments to action that are not contained in the nature 
and intrinsical quality of the agent ;" with which the definitions 
of liberty by Leibnitz, by CoUins,* by Bonnet, and by Schel- 
hng, substantially agree. " That is free," says the last, " which 
only acts conformably to the laws of its own being." But this 
is language which serves to conceal the difiiculty ; for the ques- 
tion still recurs. What are those laws of our being ? K they only 
amount to "the power of acting as we are acted on" — if this 
is all that is meant by freedom, it becomes a question whether 
there be, whether there can be, such a thing as necessity ; for if 
there be, and if there are any phenomena naturally constituted 
to be determined by it, still, according to the foregoing defini- 
tions, they must be said to be free, since they act conformably 
to the laws of their being. The hne of the poet : " the River 
windeth at his own sweet will," must be received as a meta- 
physical truth. Indeed, Hobbes actually selected the descent 
of water, or, its "hberty to descend by the channel of a river/' 
as an example of freedom. But if this be not an image, not an 
analogy, but an example of human liberty, there is no such a 
thing as necessity. Fate itself, if there were such a being, 
would, owing to the very iron rigidity of its nature, be the most 
perfect instance of liberty. The falling stone, and the mind which 
excogitated the Principia, are ahke free; the only difference 
being that the former is part of a material, and the latter part 
of a spiritual, machine ; but the movements of each are alike 
mechanical. Further, if all our actions are thus mechanical, 
or necessitated from without, it seems to follow that our charac- 

* In opposition to this view of free agency, see Dr. S. Clarke's " Re- 
marks on a Book entitled, A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human 
Liberty," and, of Dr. Reid's Essays, that on the Liberty of Moral Agents, 
cl. 



rnoGi-TssTox. 103 

ters are the inevitable result of an unremitting constraint; 
that Diderot was not illogical in concluding that there is 
" neither vice nor virtue," that " the doer of good is lucky, 
not virtuous," that "we should reproach others for nothing, and 
repent of nothing ;'' nor Bonnet, in affirming that '• the same 
chain embraces the physical and the moral worlds," and that 
"the wisdom which has ordained the existence of this chain, 
has doubtless willed that of every link of which it is composed." 
On the supposition that all our volitions,, and therefore all our 
actions, have an objective cause, there is but one Being in the 
universe to whom human conduct can be traced ; and Spinoza 
was only consistent in concluding that even He acts involunta- 
rily, and that in all He has done He had not the power to act 
otherwise.* 

6. If the bare freedom of acting as we will may thus consist 
with fatalism, we may expect to find, secondly, as our general 
proposition impHes, that the motives acting on the will do, in 
some respects, admit of selection, regulation, or resistance. If 
they do not, if man acts only and immediately as he is acted on, 
if he differs in no respect from that external world in which 
nothing determineb, but everything is determined, then are we 
still in the resistless current of necessity ; and to speak of free- 
dom as in relation to the will, is to confound fiction and truth, 
and to utter a contradiction in terms. But the enUghtened 
necessarian admits, as freely as the libertarian, the conditional 
resistibleness of motives. It is a fact of consciousness ; of daily, 
hourly experience. A motive of one kind, for example, is made 
to give place to a motive of another kind. TVherever opposing 
motives are present to the mind, one of them, at least, is over- 
ruled. Among different motives to an action, we are conscious 
of answerableness for acting from the right motive. And this 
single fact admonishes us that, in entering on the consideration 
of the human will, we have reached a province of observation 
essentially differing from every preceding province ; that, hence- 
forth, a fact unknown to all the antecedent creation (as far at 
least as this world is concerned) is to be admitted as a distin- 
guishing element in our views of man ; that the very fact of our 
having to do with that unique thing in creation, a will — there 
having been, by hypothesis, but One AYill, in, at least, this part 
of the universe, previously, and of which the human will is to 

* Res nuUo alio modo, neque alio ordine a Deo produci potuerunt, 
qaam productae sunt. — Eihic. Pars I. Prop. 33. 



104 y.AW 

be the representative — should he sufficient to remind us that 
we must move from the position from which we have hither- 
to looked at creation, and even at the phenomena of our own 
minds, and must seek to occupy a point from which we can 
mark the coincidence between the phenomena of nature which 
is necessitated, and this new phenomenon, which, in the same 
sense, is not necessitated. 

7. Here is a facuUy investing man with the high prerogative 
of subordinating the laws of nature to his own purposes ; surely, 
that cannot be the right state of mind for doing it justice which 
treats it as if it were itself nothing more than, or nothing dif- 
ferent from, one of these same external and mechanical pow- 
ers. Here is a new power, by which man himself is lifted out 
of the category of mere things and becomes a person ; surely, 
it augurs ill for a correct result, if we begin by viewing this 
power itself as a mere thing, an additional link in the iron chain 
of things. That the mind cannot originate a special method 
of reasoning for the phenomena of the will is freely admitted ; 
but neither can it employ the ordinary method, without invol- 
ving itself in error respecting them, if it be unconscious of 
having made a vast transition in its subject, of having passed 
from the natural to the super-natural. And the danger advert- 
ed to is that of treating the phenomena of a faculty which is 
sui generis, as ordinary phenomena ; of forgetting that in speak- 
ing of the will we have entered a sphere in which that which 
man is conscious of respecting it, is to be, not merely one of 
the elements admitted into the discussion, but is to supply the 
primary data. The mind has not to reason to the facts of con- 
sciousness on this subject, but from them ; and therefore until 
they are present, and have made themselves to be heard, rea- 
son itself prescribes silence. On the ordinary laws of causation 
the mind can reason securely, as on a topic which is before it, 
and below it ; but, psychologically, the will presupposes the in- 
tellect, comes after it, and, as the great executive power of the 
mind, ranks above it. At this point, therefore, reason has to 
wait for, and to accept of, facts of consciousness, which are them- 
selves — ultimate facts. 

8. The fact that some motives are resistible, is admitted. 
But this proves nothing conclusive, either for the libertarian, or 
against the necessarian. For, first, if the latter remarks that 
the view of the libertarian gains nothing by the admission, smce 
the overcoming power itself is a motive ; it is rejoined that this 
is the point to be proved, not assumed ; and that to say, that it 



PROGIfcESSION. 105 

is the strongest motive which prevails, because it prevails, is to 
argue in a circle. To which the libertarian adds, secondly, 
that even granting it to be a law of the will that it shall act 
only under the influence of the strongest motive, to conclude 
that therefore the act is caused by the motive, would be to beg 
the question at issue ; and that, in his eyes, it would be to 
confound law and cause, uniformity of condition and efficiency 
of operation. And, thirdly, that the fact that no motive is uni- 
formly strong for the mind, shows that all the apparent strength 
of the motive is not inherent, or independent of the mind 
which entertains it ; that its power is more subjective than ob- 
jective ; and that such subjective strength may therefore be 
the result of a prior exercise of the will. As the sensation of 
fragrance is not in the flower which occasions it, but in the 
sentient mind itself; and as the emotion of desire is not in the 
intellectual act which precedes and occasions it, but in the 
emotional mind itself; so, by analogy, the strength exhibited in 
volition may not he in the motive which precedes and occasions 
it, but in the faculty of volition, the wdll, itself. The flower, 
the thought, the motive, being nothing more than occasions of 
the sensation, the emotion, and the voHtion, respectively; 
necessary occasions, it is true, but still occasions or conditions 
only. 

9. Now the necessarian himself coincides in this representa- 
tion to this extent, that he never thinks of confounding motives 
with mere external objects. That which moves the wdU, he 
teaches, is " that motive, which, as it stands in the view of the 
mind, is the strongest ; " in other words, that the motive will 
always be, as is the character of the man viewing, and of the 
object viewed, taken conjointly, and that, consequently, it will 
be different in dilFerent men, and even different in the same 
man at different times. All that yet appears evident, then, is, 
that motives are conditionally resistible. Whether the resisting 
power consists of counter-motives, or of the will itself, remains 
to be considered. 

10. Accordingly, our third remark, harmonizing with our 
general proposition, is, that the force of these motives which 
are yielded to is not the force of efficient causation, necessarily 
producing vohtions as effects in the same sense in which phy- 
sical causes produce effects. Here, as in the last particular, 
we are removed back from the connection between volitions and 
their sequents to the connection between volitions and their 
antecedents — motives. And, without saying anything at pres- 



106 MAN. 

ent on the certainty of this connection, we merely affirm that, in 
its nature^ it differs essentially from that of physical causes and 
effects. For example, we may have decided on the performance 
of a certain act, for several reasons, but when just on the point 
of performing it, we liesitate ; during our hesitation, all the 
reasons but one cease to exist, and that one becomes consider- 
ably weakened ; and yet, after all, we decide on and perform 
the act. Now, this phenomenon, of a thing which is to be 
acted on resisting or suspending the influence of that which 
acts on it when at its strongest, and yet yielding to the same 
thing when at its weakest, has no strict analogy in material 
nature. 

11. Now, the libertarian affirms that the will itself is a cause ; 
not a lawless, chance-like, or unlimited cause, but a cause in- 
variably conditioned by motives ; and that, provided these con- 
ditions are present, it is capable of originating particular vo- 
litions, and of acting or determining itself in a special direc- 
tion. And this view he regards as arming him with an ade- 
quate reply to the famous objection, that if motives are not 
the cause of any given volition, some previous volition must be, 
that volition again being preceded by another volition, and so 
on, ad infinitum. For, he argues, that if the will itself be a 
conditional cause of volition, no other cause need be invoked ; 
and, indeed, that the so-called reductio ad absurdum of an^ in- 
finite retrogressive series of causative acts, supposed to be 
chargeable, in one form, on the advocates of an unconstrained 
will, belongs properly and exclusively, in another form, to the 
necessarian scheme, which appears to exhibit the un^\^nding of 
a system of causes and effects in one long line of inseparable 
dependencies. 

12. The objection thus combated had been made to assume 
a very formidable aspect by some necessarian philosophers and 
divines, who represented it as endangering the argument for a 
First Cause. Collins pretended a concern for the argument 
when he wrote, " Man is a necessary agent, because all his 
actions have a beginning. For whatever has a beginning must 
have a cause ; and every cause is a necessary cause. If any- 
thing can have a beginning, which has no cause, then nothing 
can produce something!"* "As to all things that begin to 
be," says Edwards, " they are not self-existent, and, therefore, 

* Collin's Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty, pp. 57 — 



PROGRESSION. 107 

must have some foundation of their existence without them- 
selves."* Edwards, though employing almost the same lan- 
guage as that of Collins, was actuated by a very diflFerent mo- 
tive ; by a holy jealousy lest " the scheme of free will (by afford- 
ing an exception to that dictate of common sense which refers 
every event to a cause) should destroy the proof a posteriori for 
the being of God." The libertarian, however, points to the log- 
ical consequences of the necessarian's own argument on the sub- 
ject, according to Collins, " that every cause is a necessary 
cause ; " in other words, that even the First Cause is only an- 
other name for Fate. Or, waiving this consideration, the liber- 
tarian calls attention to the fact that as, in his view, the w^ill it- 
self is a cause of which every volition is an effect, the danger 
apprehended is not of his creation ; and, further, that he be- 
lieves as fully as the necessarian that all things that begin to be, 
and therefore every will of which vohtions are the manifesta- 
tion, are of Divine creation ; and that every created will is con- 
stantly sustained in the causative activity which it exercises by 
the pervading agency of its Maker. 

13. Another objection alleged against the self-determining 
power of the will is derived from the doctrine of the Divine 
foreknowledge. Either man is free, it is said, and then it is im- 
possible to foresee his volitions ; or else his volitions can be fore- 
seen, and then he is not free. To this the advocates of the free- 
dom of the will reply, first. The objection is not relevant. If 
the objector will only inform us of the mode of the Divine fore- 
knowledge — in which foreknowledge we believe as unwaver- 
ingly as he does — probably no difficulty will remain. But till 
then, his objection owes its strength, not to his knowledge, but 
to his ignorance. He is arguing from the darkness of the un- 
known, against the light of the known and the felt ; from a sub- 
ject of which he is entirely ignorant, against a fact of his own 
consciousness. So that in order to be employed at all, the ob- 
jection must be based on an assumption. It supposes, without 
any authority, that man's mode of acquiring foreknowledge and 
God's, are identical. We foresee the future only by induction 
from the past ; this foresight never attains to certainty except in 
the calculation of mechanical laws — of causes and effects con- 
nected by necessary dependence ; when the effects of free 
agents are to be anticipated, our foresight is, at best, mere con- 
jecture. Now the design of the objection is evidently to re- 
lieve the infinite mind from the supposed difficulty and uncer- 

* Inquiry on the Will. V. II., § 3. 



108 MAK. 

tainty of having to foresee in any other way than by induction. 
The objector, indeed, does not know that such is the mode of 
the Divine foreknowledge ; but his objection supposes that he 
does know. He says, in effect, that he himself could not fore- 
see all things, unless the whole were capable of arithmetical cal- 
culation ; and he assumes the same for Him whose " thoughts 
are not as our thoughts." Perhaps, however, he would revolt 
from forming such an idea of the Divine prescience ; yet this 
appears to be the legitimate application of his objection. At all 
events, while he may be sincere in the homage which he pays 
to the Divine foreknowledge in sacrificing to it the fact of hu- 
man liberty, we trust we are not less sincere in abstaining 
from the imposition on the Infinite Mind of that limitation and 
feebleness of our own minds, which alone render such a sac- 
rifice necessary. We do not avail ourselves of the view which 
regards before and after as terras relative only to our mode of 
acquiring knowledge ; which denies that infinite knowledge has 
a past and a future any more than infinite space has an above 
and a below ; and which represents duration as an ever-present, 
and the Deity as knowing all the events of that present. We 
content ourselves with saying, that until the objector can dis- 
close to us the mode of the Divine knowledge, he can derive 
no argument from that quarter without assuming that his dark- 
ness is as good as light. 

And, secondly, they argue. If the foreknowledge of actions 
necessitate them, every action, according to the scheme of the 
necessarian, must be the effect of two distinct causes — of the 
Divine prescience, and also of the force of motives. He can- 
not regard both these as identical ; for Divine prescience, is not 
human motives, nor are human motives Divine prescience. Nor 
can we regard the one as the consequence of the other; for then 
the sense in which the one necessitates actions must differ es- 
sentially from the sense in which the other necessitates them. 
Thus, if the actions are necessitated by the Divine prescience, 
then the motives cannot cause them, for the actions would ne- 
cessarily follow even without the motives ; if again the Divine 
prescience of human actions is the consequence of the neces- 
sary operation of motives, then those motives would have op- 
erated necessarily, whether forseen or not. The true and only 
explanation of the difficulty appears to be this, that the term 
necessity is here employed by the necessarian in two distinct 
senses. As applied to motives producing actions, it is the me- 
chanical necessity of cause and effect. But as applied to Di- 



PROGRESSION. 109 

vine prescience, it is simply the certainty of the effect. If it 
meant more than certainty — if foreknovvledge exercises a ne- 
cessitating force, the Infinite Agent himself is not free ; for 
"He seeth the end from the beginning." But are the events 
of His providence necessitated by His foreknowledge of them ? 
In other words, are they caused by His prescience or by His 
will ? On this point, His own declaration is definitive, " He 
doeth all things according to the counsel of His own will." So 
that his foreknowledge, leaving his will unconstrained, has sim- 
ply to do with the certainty of the events which He has willed 
taking place. And the same is true of the Divine foreknow- 
lege of human volitions. 

14. Thus far, we have seen that man has the power of act- 
ing according to the dictates of his will ; that when different 
motives are present to his mind, some of them are resistible ; 
and that the force of those yielded to, is not that of efficient 
causation in the same sense in which physical causes produce 
effects. We have now to remark, fourthly, in agreement with 
our general proposition, that the mind is conscious of an un- 
constrained power of volition. However certain or necessary, 
then, the connection between motives and volitions, either that 
necessary relation is not necessitating, or else these necessita- 
ting motives must themselves have had an element of freedom, 
operative in some^-^tage of their formation ; or else this con- 
sciousness of unconstrained power must be an illusion. The 
choice of the religious necessarian must lie between the jfirst 
and second of these alternatives. Ultimately, perhaps, they are 
one. But to deny that an element of freedom comes into oper- 
ation at one or other of the two points specified, is to deny the 
veracity of consciousness, and to shut himself up to the third 
alternative. 

15. We have not attempted to define the Will, for, as an ul- 
timate power of the human mind, we do not believe that it ad- 
mits of formal definition. Nor have we attempted to define the 
Freedom of the will, for we regard it as a simple idea. All the 
definitions of it, hitherto given, are nothing more than synony- 
mous expressions or identical j)ropositions. The meaning or 
i lea of freedom must spontaneously arise in the mind, and free- 
dom itself be consciously realized and felt, or no definition or 
description can ever originate the idea. It is open for consid- 
eration, however, at what point the element of freedom, of which 
the mind is conscious, comes into play as one of the antecedents 
of volition. For, from the moment that man received a moral 
10 



110 MAN. 

constitution, reason required that such an antecedent there should 
be, and consciousness attested its existence. To affirm that 
every action, Hke the will itself, is originated from without, and 
that the influence originating it, encounters no such element 
within as that of which we speak, but passes into a volition as a 
cause producing its unmodified effect, is fatalism. To affirm, in 
effect, that the Creator could not give me a choosing power, 
without Himself causing every act of that power as really as He 
caused the power itself, or choosing for me — that He could not 
endow me, that is, with the function of choice without retaining 
and exercising that function Himself — is a self-contradiction. 
To imply that nothing but necessity is possible, that it is not 
in the compass of Omnipotence to create a will not necessitated 
in its volitions, as it respects both the operation, and the compo- 
sition, of the motives producing them, would be to beg the point 
at issue, and to do this in the ^ce of a protesting consciousness. 
16. The analogy ordinarily invoked to sustain such views 
from the laws of causation in the material world, fails in the 
only point in which it would be relevant, for the physical cause 
or moving power is external to the thing affected ; in the in- 
stance of voluntary agents, the motive is - not external. Emo- 
tions are my emotions, states of my mind, expressions of my 
character. Granted, that inducements to action come from 
without, the very fact that they come to be accepted or rejected, 
shows that the mind is free in a sense which takes its phenom- 
ena out of all strict analogy with the phenomena of mechanical 
causation. Granted, also, that some of these inducements are 
acted on, it is not as mere objective realities that they move me. 
They do not adopt me, but I, a person, accept them, and accept 
them as having become subjective states of my own mind. And 
does not Edwards (it will, perhaps, be asked) take, substantially, 
the same view of the motives ? distinctly affirming that the vo- 
lition depends not only upon " what appears in the object view- 
ed, but also in the manner of the view, and the state and circum- 
stances of the mind that views :" in other words, on subjective 
as well as on objective conditions ? Admitted. This, indeed, 
is the great principle of his system. So, also, Mill, in insisting 
on the universality of the law of causation, affu-ms that " by say- 
ing that a man's actions necessarily follow from his character, 
all that is really meant is, that he invariably does act m con- 
formity to his character."* But the question is, what faculties 



* SystemofLogic, I. 419. 



o 



PROGRESSION. 



Ill 



or processes are concealed or included in this state of mind, and 
in this character f Do they really involve an unconstrained 
power ? or have they been all made what they are by con- 
straint ? He who adopts the latter aUernative ought, in fair- 
ness, to omit the subjective element in his account of the condi- 
tions on which vohtion depends ; or else, to add that, ultimate- 
ly, it is traceable entirely to objective causes, and, as such, is 
independent of the man, and irresistibly formative of him. 

17. The sense, then, in which we speak of emotions as our 
emotions, states of our minds, supposes that they involve the 
presence of an element of freedom. Coleridge, indeed, has af- 
firmed that " the man makes the motive, and not the motive the 
man." Taken without explanation, each member of this sen- 
tence may be regarded as containing only a half-truth. From 
the first moment of conscious volition, the man and the motive 
begin to make each other ; but they operate in a certain order. 
In that first moment, and in all the successive acts of man's 
voluntary agency, the motive chronologically precedes the voli- 
tion, the will psychologically precedes the motive. Even though 
it should appear, therefore, that the motive determines the voli- 
tion, it could have acquired the power only from the prior con- 
sent of the unconstrained will itself. Motives are ever modify- 
ing character, but, primarily, character is to be viewed as modi- 
fying motives, and, therefore, as being ultimately the sum and 
result of its own acts. 

18. In corroboration of this view, it is to be borne in mind 
that we are actually indebted for the idea of causation to the 
conscious exertion of our own will. I make an effort to move 
my arm, and I move it. The relation between the effort and 
the movement is a relation of succession ; but it is more. If my 
consciousness is to be relied on, it is also mediately or immedi- 
ately a relation of efficiency. The effort supposed is in the 
will ; in making it I feel that I really produce an effect, of which 
the organic movement is the manifestation ; and it is in the con- 
sciousness of this that I find the idea of cause. And, further, 
in the very act of making the effort, I am conscious of a control- 
ling power in reserve, which leaves me free to make it or to de- 
sist from it. 

19. " But may not this consciousness be an illusion arising 
from our ignorance of the antecedent causes ?" This sentiment 
may be either boldly asserted, or tacitly implied, and taken for 
granted. In his endeavor to reconcile the feehng of liberty 
with the doctrine of necessity, Lord Karnes, in his Essays and 



112 MAN. 

Sketches, explicitly adopted and advocated it. According to 
him, at the moment when man imagines that he is performing 
his own act, he is only an instrument developing a concealed 
necessity. He is, in effect, a machine, fancying itself an agent. 
The distinguishing characteristic of his nature is a lie, and he is 
constituted to act through life on the firm faith of its being a 
truth. Startling as this consequence may be, the reasoning of 
those who argue the doctrine of necessity as if the will Avere 
subject to the law of cause and effect, in the same sense as the 
phenomena of nature, is chargeable with involving the same re- 
sults. But, in proportion to the revolting nature of the view 
adverted to, is its value as a proof of our consciousness of free- 
dom ; for it is the confession of an ultra-necessarian or fatalist, 
of the utter uselessness of questioning the jTac^ of such conscious- 
ness. The Stoics themselves, the champions of fate, strenuous- 
ly asserted the liberty of the will.* Descartes, in the same 
passage in which he asserts that God is the cause of all our ac- 
tions, appeals to the evidence of consciousness for the freedom 
of the will.t Nothing but a truth deep-seated in the conscious- 
ness, could thus maintain its ground amidst hostile views, and 
cause its voice to be heard by unwilling ears. It is recognized 
in the common forms of speech in all civilized languages ; in the 
universal faith, in the judicial administrations, and in the estab- 
lished practices, of mankind ; nor does any rational being ever 
lose the consciousness of it. 

20. Were it not for this conscious freedom, man would be 
incapable of government or obligation. Some, indeed, would 
object that the possession of such a power would render him in- 
capable of government. Superior to the government of com- 
pulsion and necessity, such as that to which matter is subject, it 
certainly does render him. But not incapable of rational and 
moral government ; for it leaves him open to the influence of 
motives. And" it is the consciousness of his power to deal with 
this influence freely, as opposed to its necessitating force, that 
lies at the foundation of his sense of responsibility. To say that 
any moral obligation could rest on a creature whose actions are 
determined by necessity, would be a self-contradiction. If my 
volitions are truly and in every sense, necessitated, the Divine 
jurisdiction in my breast cannot commence till after I have 
willed. If my power has no reference to my motives, I cannot 

* Enchiridion of Epictetus ; the opening sentences, 
t Cartesii EpistolcB Vlli. IX., Pars I. 



O 



PKOGRESSION. 113 

be held responsible for a ting from one motive rather than from 
another. If my freedom hes exclusively in the connection be- 
tween my vohtions and their sequents, why yet am I so consti- 
tuted, that even when that freedom is denied me, I feel con- 
scious of an obligation to will, purpose, or intend a certain act, 
despite my want of opportunity to perform it ? Of power with- 
out responsibility we can conceive ; but responsibility without 
power is a nullity. An unconstrained will, in some sense, is 
essential to make morality even possible. - And if the authority 
of consciousness is, as we saw, ultimate and infallible in the in- 
tellectual department, it must be received as decisive on moral 
questions also. 

21. Fifthly, an important element of this great subject yet 
remains to be considered, and one which is vitally involved in 
our general proposition, namely, that although motives are not 
necessitating causes of vohtions, they stand in necessary and 
harmonious relation to them as, at least, conditions. Many of 
the advocates of human liberty have erred in not assigning to 
this part of the subject its due importance. In their anxiety 
to protect the precious interests involved in the conscious fact 
of an unconstrained will, they have not sufficiently borne in 
mind that this freedom itself contemplates the attainment of an 
end ; that every individual will is placed in the midst of a great 
system, of which every part has a tendency in the same direc- 
tion as that in which the will finds its highest liberty. 

22. It is at this point of the subject — if anywhere — that the 
necessarian and the Hbertarian, by aiming to combine, in one 
view, the claims of the individual will and the claims of the 
great encircling system in which it moves, may hope to approx- 
imate, though they may never entirely coalesce. Each errs, 
perhaps, not so much in what he affirms, as in what he denies. 
Each approaches and contemplates the subject from a different 
point, and seldom sees to advantage more than one side of it. 
The most eminent of each party are the readiest to admit that 
neither view alone is adequate to all the exigencies of the sub- 
ject ; that there is essential truth lying on each side of the 
line which separates them, and truth which is separately de- 
monstrable ; and that the great difficulty lies in mutually ac- 
cepting each other's mode of exhibiting that tryth, and in the 
reconciliation of their respective views. To conclude, however, 
that because we find it difficult to harmonize two propositions, 
therefore they are irreconcilable, or else one of them must be 
false, is to erect our minds into the standard of truth, and our 

10* 



114 MAN. 

present knowledge into the measure of all possible attainments. 
Surely, nothing is wanting on the part of the religious dispu- 
tants on this subject but a little Christian magnanimity, in order 
to dissipate their mutual misunderstandings, and so to narrow 
the debateable ground which separates them as to make them 
practically one. 

23. If now it be true, as stated, that man is made for an end 
— whatever that end may be — the libertarian must concede 
that the liberty of the will cannoc be such as to leave man in- 
different to that end. Suppose man made for happiness, it can- 
not be a condition of freedom that he should be equally biassed 
in I'avor of misery. Suppose him, again, introduced into a sys- 
tem in which some things tend to his misery, and others flow in 
the direction of his happiness, it cannot be required in order to 
his freedom that he should be affected by both classes alike. 
But if he be not, the so-called liberty of indifference has no ex- 
istence. And it was against that theory of the will which 
invests it with a self-determining power irrespective of motives, 
that Edwards especially directed his powerful logic. The utter 
untenableness of such a theory is further evident from the fact 
that it makes a habit of virtue or of vice impossible ; for in pro- 
portion as a course of conduct became habitual, the very force 
of the habit would destroy its moral character, so that it would 
be only necessary for a man to persist in a vice until it became 
inveterate, in order to neutralize his guilt. In the same man- 
ner, virtue would be diminished in an inverse ratio to the force 
of the motives to practise it. Accordingly, Whitby and others 
actually taught that the actions of the holy and of evil angels 
are alike destitute of a moral character, and therefore alike un- 
susceptible of reward and punishment. Now, to say nothing 
of the revolting difficulties in which a libertarian entertaining 
such views would be involved were they to be applied to the 
Divine volitions, we may safely refer them for a reply to the 
consciousness of every individual, and to the fearful moral con- 
sequences to which they directly tend. 

24. That men act without motives is a doctrine as ahen from 
enlightened views of an unconstrained will, as from those of 
moral necessity. Even Dr. S. Clarke, in his remarks on Col- 
lins, affirms, that the dictate of the understanding is substantially 
the same as the determination of the will, and cannot be distin- 
guished from it. But though men never act without motives, it 
is contended that it by no means follows that their actions are 
caused by motives. The motives are the necessary occasion 



O 



MiOGRESSION. 115 

and condition of the will's activity, while the will itself, as the 
principle and cause of its own volitions, determines the particu- 
lar volition, in the view of these motives, to be what it is, and 
not otherwise. " What determines the man to a good and wor- 
thy act, we will say, or a virtuous course of conduct ? The 
intelligent will, or the self-determining power ? True, in part^ 
it is ; and therefore the will is pre-eminently the spiritual con- 
stituent in our being. But will any reflecting man admit that 
his own will is the only and sufficient determinant of all he is, 
and all he does ? Is nothing to be attributed to the harmony 
of the system to which he belongs, and to the pre-established 
fitness of the objects and agents, known and unknown, that sur- 
round him, as acting on the will, though, doubtless, with it like- 
wise ? a process which the co-instantaneous, yet reciprocal ac- 
tion of the air, and the vital energy of the lungs in breathing, 
may help to render intelligible." * More strikingly stiU may 
this illustration be made to serve its purpose, if we think of the 
moment in which the air and the lungs first come into contact 
at the birth of the infant. What nice arrangement and exqui- 
site adaptation are necessary in order to bring about the coinci- 
dence of the two in that eventful moment ! Without the sur- 
rounding air there would be no motion of the lungs, no life ; but 
the air is only a condition of hfe. Were it the cause, the lungs 
would never cease to play as long as they continued to be sup- 
plied with air. 

In a manner somewhat analogous, motives, as conditions, 
influential conditions, are necessarily co-present with our voli- 
tions. For man to act without motives, even if it were optional, 
would only serve to convict him. of irrationality. To affirm 
that he is naturally constituted to act and will without reasons, 
would be to lower him to a level with animal instinct. That 
he is really influenced by motives is a fact of which he is as 
conscious as that he is not irresistibly determined by them. 
So that while motives are not physically the causa causans, 
equally clear is it that they are the sine qua non of' our voli- 
tions. If a will necessarily constrained by motives is a contra- 
diction, it is equally evident that a will separate from, and unin- 
fluenced by them, is a nonentity. 

25. But how is this view of the necessity of acting from a 
motive compatible with the doctrine of an unconstrained will ? 
We think it may be shown, as a matter of fact, that neither in 

* Coleridge's Aids, &c., p. 67. 



116 MAN. 

the being of God, nor in the laws of nature, (and these are the 
only sources whence opposition could come,) is there any- 
thing incompatible with the co-existence and perfect harmony 
of the two. 

The first part of the problem is this : — Can a particular will 
exist at the same time with a universal will ? Can the freedom 
of the finite being exist without being overborne by the infinite 
power of Grod ? and His power escape invasion from the un- 
compelled activity of the human will? That all beings are 
necessarily dependent on Grod — that their dependence is not 
an arbitrary arrangement, but the inevitable condition of their 
continued existence, is a fundamental truth ; and the question 
is, — can man's personal freedom co-exist with this state of 
dependency? Now, that freedom and law can co-exist is 
evident ; for the highest freedom and the highest law actually 
exist in perfect combination in the Creator himself. We behold 
it in that co-existence of voluntariness and appointment which 
constitutes the basis of the whole scheme of Divine manifesta- 
tion. It is recognizable even prior to that, in the order of 
thought, in the still more simple form of that Primary purpose 
by which the Self-sufl5cient bound himself to appear as the 
All-suflScient, and thus, certainly, for an infinite Reason, yet 
voluntarily, brought himself under obligation to do that which 
He will certainly, yet voluntarily, be ever doing. 

26. But if such co-existence be realized in God, we can 
show next that a similar co-existence in man is not merely 
probable, but is even made necessary, by the great end of the 
Divine manifestation. Even if no such end existed — if the 
design of God in creation were simply to be known, the co- 
incidence of law and will in man was necessary ; for if this 
coincidence exist in the Divine Being, the only condition on 
which it would be possible for us to know it would be, that He 
will the existence of the same in us. If His design were only 
to he loved, this coincidence was still necessary ; for none but 
personal beings — beings influenced by motives, and determined 
by will — possess the capability of loving, as none but such are 
the proper objects of love. But the great and ultimate design 
of creation is the manifestation of the Divine All-sufficiency. 
The greater the Divine Perfection, the more certainly will that 
perfection be exhibited in the most exalted of His creatures. 
Now the co-existence of law with freedom in His own nature 
is the highest perfection of which a creature can conceive. It 
is that alone which makes a holy and a happy creation pos- 



r^ 



PROGRESSION. 117 

sible. Not to impart this perfection to a creature, is to leave 
His highest glory as a Creator unrevealed. Destitute of this 
characteristic, man, so far from being in His image, would be 
most unlike Ham; for he would want the very perfection which 
distinguishes an intelligent and a personal God from a bUnd, 
impersonal, and resistless fate. And creation, as it would only 
exhibit a power working mechanically with blind impulsion, 
would, instead of displaying His glory, only serve to detract 
from it. jSIan, then, may be expected to resemble God in this 
important respect. But this is saying, in effect, that his par- 
ticular will can co-exist with the Universal will. For the co- 
incidence of law and freedom — of motive and vohtion — in God 
is the very thing to he manifested. And the coincidence of 
man's own individual will with the Divine wiU is essential to 
make the manifestation possible. 

27. But, it may be asked whether it is permissible to reason 
from the law which regulates the Divine activity to the law of 
man's dependence ? Are they sufficiently analogous, that is, to 
justify the conclusion that if the former co-exists with Divine 
freedom, the latter is equally compatible with human Hberty ? 
We cannot hesitate to reply in the affirmative. For the nature 
of the difficulty to be solved is the same in each instance. True, 
in the former case, the law is freely Self-imposed ; while, in the 
latter, it is an unavoidable necessary condition. But the point 
in question is, not the origin of the law, nor the reason of the 
law, but the reconcilement of its actual existence with real free- 
dom — for law is limitation. Now, in the manifested God we 
actually behold self-hmitation ; a limitation of power which, 
having been originated, not only permits the existence of other 
powers, but even their wanderings, without crushing them ; a 
limitation of activity which, so far from doing all things at once, 
admits of unending progression ; a limitation freely Self-imposed 
for the highest purpose, and of which the highest perfection 
alone is capable. Not merely, therefore, is freedom compatible 
with the limitation of law, we have, here, the archetype of this 
grand truth for all orders of free intelHgences, and the ground 
of its existence and manifestation in them. He "hides His 
power," that man's power might not be overborne. He veils 
His effulgence, and circumscribes His activity, that man might 
be able to look abroad, and might find ample scope for his free 
agency. 

28. And, by the same arrangement, the Divine agency 
escapes the infringement of the free activity of the human wiU. 



118 MAN. 

The possibility of man's sinning, indeed, only demonstrates the 
reality of his freedom. And the fact that his sinning was only 
possible, and not necessary, proves that the limitation arising 
from his dependence left that reality untouched. We are not 
now, however, treating of man actual and historical, but of man 
potential. And, we repeat, that the fact that the infinitely free 
God was pleased to will the limitation of His own agency, is 
the very ground which makes the freedom of man possible, 
though he is dependent ; and which provides for his obedience, 
though he is free. While his necessary finiteness and depend- 
ence surround him with a circle beyond which he has no power 
to move, the Supreme Will assigns that, within that circle, his 
will shall be free from the centre to thfe circumference. And 
what higher guarantee can be given that his unconstrained 
movements will be all in harmony with the free activity of 
the Supreme Agent, than the fact, that his freedom is an en- 
dowment designed expressly to manifest and represent the 
Divine freedom ? 

29. This coincidence of the free human will with the Divine 
is essential, therefore, in order to its perfection. For if the 
operation of the Divine will is according to infinite reason, and 
is therefore perfect, the "freedom of a finite will is possible 
under this condition only, that it becomes one with the will of 
God." Where this harmony has either never been disturbed, 
or is entirely restored, holy influences from without may be 
supposed to act on and through the emotions most directly. 
There is nothing in the mind to divert their course, or to di- 
minish their intensity. "The pure in heart shall see God;" 
and the Ught which streams from his presence reaches their 
will without decomposition or refraction. Voluntarily they place 
themselves in a line with its rays, and spontaneously move only 
in the direction of its beams ; and as they go on consciously 
brightening under its radiance, the continuous act of uncon- 
strained choice which retains them in it, reflects it back again 
in homage with added splendor. And thus the state in which 
they appear, from their spontaneous and perfect conformity to 
the Divine law, to be the least free, or to be most completely 
surrendered to the will of God, is the state in which each is 
most vividly conscious of individuality, and in which ^ all feel 
themselves most exultingly free. 

30. This view suggests the reply appropriate to the second 
part of the inquiry — How can the freedom of the human will 
consist with the necessary laws to which nature is subjected ? 



PKOGRESSION. 119 

Nature itself owes its origin to the same source, and exists for 
the same end, as the human mind, however different its consti- 
tution. Had the free human being come into a world not yet 
subjected to law (admitting for a moment the possibihty of such 
a world), he would have found that until it was brought under 
law, it was no world for him either to know or to employ. Its 
pre-existing laws were the very conditions of its habitableness. 
All of them, however, are but the appointments and inferior 
expressions of the same Divine will which has endowed him 
with freedom. It is not possible, therefore, to conceive, on the 
one hand, of nature as standing in contradiction to freedom ; 
and if, on the other, the human will is in coincidence with the 
Divine wUl, it follows that it is in coincidence with everything 
that expresses that will, and therefore with nature. Besides, 
nature itself is mechanical only as viewed apart from its Maker; 
and as having no will of its own, or in itself. Regarded as the 
production of the Infinite will, and the expression of Divine 
attributes, it supposes that the finite will which already agrees 
with the Infinite will, is one with nature also. "The finite 
will," as Coleridge expresses it,* " gives a beginning only by 
coincidence with the absolute will, which is at the same time, 
infinite power. Such is the language of reKgion, and of phi- 
losophy too, in the last instance. But I express the same truth 
in ordinary language when I say that a finite will, or a finite 
free -agent, acts outwardly by confluence with the laws of 
nature." Primarily, the only freedom he needs, is that of being 
able to act on his own nature, to assert his exemption from the 
iron chain of physical laws. And this liberty he consciously 
asserts, partly in the high ends to which he applies these laws. 
Availing himself of these, or acting in harmony with them, his 
power over nature is of a degree unknown — a power, indeed, 
which, as comprehended in his own will, corresponds with the 
Supreme will. Nature thus treated, so far from being hostile to 
his freedom, aspires to share it ; and he, the finite artist, aspires 
to call into existence forms unknown to nature — a second 
nature — in humble imitation of the productive energy of the 
Creator. 

ol. And thus we arrive at the conclusion, that though motives 
are not the compelling cause of volitions, they yet stand har- 
moniously related to them as essential conditions. This is at 
once a fact of observation, and a truth of consciousness. It is 

* Aids to Reflection, p. 261. 



120 MAN. 

this which makes both sin and hohness possible. And it is 
this wondrous arrangement by which man, the inferior part of 
whose constitution is itself mechanical and necessary, possesses 
the means of bringing that part of his nature into the Divine 
presence, and of offering it up as a free-will offering to God. 
Thus resembhng his Maker in another respect; for as all 
material nature is the product of the Divine will, and is made 
subservient to the Divine glory, so man, made in the image of 
God, possesses the means of subjecting that condensed world, 
his own nature, to the Di^dne will, as the free act of his own 
individual will. 

32. We have now to attempt, as proposed, a brief exposition 
of the laws of the will in relation to motives. If the view which 
we have taken be correct, it may be expected (1.) that the will 
is capable of availing itself, in some manner, of the different 
motives or classes of motives, to an act or a course of conduct, 
before it decides what that course shall be. Motives are of 
different orders, answering to man's different relations, internal 
and external ; motives arising from his appetites, his seff-love, 
his affections, and his regard for the will of God. (Of that 
sense of duty, or consciousness of obligation, which may 
underHe the entire field of motives, and which, when present, 
adds to them a sacred and ultimate character, we have not now 
to speak.) These motives lie around the will, and enclose it. 
The more a man observes, converses, and reflects, the more the 
motives of each class are multiplied. No motive of one class 
can influence him to put forth a voHtion, to which volition mo- 
tives belonging to the other classes do not also bear a more or 
less intimate relation. Are these other classes of motives to 
exist in vain ? At one time or other, they have been present 
to his mind; can they in no way be recovered when it is most 
important that they should be felt ? and, if they are recoverable, 
what is the state of the mind in the interval which passes 
between the first motive to an act, and the action ? Now, that 
the will is not necessarily impelled by the first motive which 
acts on it, in any given instance, we have seen already. And if. 
Having decided not to yield to it, at least, till other motives 
appear; if, during this pause, the mind re-produces prior con- 
.victions, or presents new considerations, and if the will is then 
decided by these latter reasons, it has in so far resisted the 
first motive, and has adopted another, which presented itself as 
the indirect consequence of that resistance. This is a mental 
process of familiar occurrence. If the plurahty of motives 



O- 



PROGRESSIOI 121 

between which the will decides be not a plurality of co- 
existence, but of successive existence, the process begins in the 
act of the will negativing the first motive, and thus affoi ding 
scope and opportunity for the introduction of others; this is 
followed by the power of recollection, or suggestion, or both, 
producing them ; and of attention in regarding them ; though 
after all, perhaps, the first motive may prevail. This power 
of the will it is which constitutes the chief difference between 
the mere creature of impulse or of circumstances, and the man 
who acts from wise dehberation. 

33. (2.) It would further augment the power of the will if, 
besides being able to call for objects of thought as motives to 
action, each of these objects should suggest to the mind a train 
of other and associated objects, accompanied by their appropri- 
ate emotions. Now, such proves to be the fact. An object 
may solicit the will to move in a particular direction, but before 
the movement is made, other objects of thought are summoned 
to reinforce the prior motive, or else to counteract it. They 
come not singly, but in linked association ; and it depends on 
which of these the attention fixes, and on its character, as to 
whether the will moves in the direction at first indicated, or in 
an opposite course. Not only will that act of attention magnify 
the importance of the object, and invest it with a light which 
will cast the others into shade ; if that act of attention be con- 
tinued, the effect will be to bring all those other thoughts as 
auxiliaries, and to range them around that central motive, to 
strengthen and to serve it. Everything will seem to join as 
minor motives, in urging the will in the direction of that selected 
and principal motive. 

How vital the connection which exists between the subjective 
and the objective, when the world without is thus able to call 
up trains of thought in the world within ; and the world within 
to be ever drawing in fresh materials of thought from the world 
without ! How vital the connection between these movements 
within, when, to call for a single thought is to tend, at least, to 
move the whole ; and when, of all which do appear, there is not 
one which might not prove an incentive to action ! And how 
lofty that power of the mind which, when surrounded by these 
motives, and influenced by them, can yet decide to which it 
will yield ! 

34. (3.) The power of the will would be still greater if, be- 
sides indirectly calling for motives to action, it could select and 
attend to any one of these motives at pleasure. We say iinr 

11 



122 



MAN. 



directly call for them, for, as we have shown above, the will 
cannot, on the instant, bid any or every train of thought into its 
presence which the nature of the impending volition might ren- 
der seasonable and important. But, having delayed the voUtion, 
having resisted a present motive that it might delay, and having 
thus placed itself in a condition to receive the influence of other 
motives, the mind does possess the important power of selecting 
either of these, and of concentrating upon it the whole of its 
regards. This is the faculty of attention; and an act of attention 
is a voluntary act, an exercise or manifestation of the will. 

According to a preceding head, I can, by a volition, transport 
myself to a new scene of observation ; and, in so far, 1 must 
be regarded as voluntarily exposing myself to the action or 
influence of whatever objects that scene may exhibit. But, 
when surrounded by these objects, I can, according to the 
present head, determine, by another volition, on which, or 
whether on any, of all these objects I will fix my regards. Be- 
sides the muscular power which my will employed to take me 
to the spot, I can, when there, employ the same muscular poAver 
to remove me from it; or to close my eyes and to shut out the 
entire scene ; or to keep my gaze steadily fixed on only one of 
all the objects which it contains. So also, by voluntarily calling 
for certain objects of thought, and by bringing them from the 
past, the distant, or the future, I am, in effect, willing the emo- 
tions which they are calculated to excite. The particular ob- 
ject I wish to think of, indeed, may be forgotten ; but something 
relating to it may be remembered, and by dwelling upon that, 
I am voluntarily giving it the opportunity of recalling all the 
objects of thought with which it is associated ; and, among them, 
the particular idea I desire to recover. Not only therefore is 
the emotional influence of that particular idea when recovered 
to be traced back to that act of the will which first called for it, 
but whatever influence has been shed on me by the train of 
ideas which at length brought me to it, I must be regarded as 
having voluntarily submitted to likewise. And, in like manner, 
if I desire to avoid a certain object of thought, I can call for one 
of a contrary nature ; in which case, I voluntarily withdraw my 
mind from one class of emotions and subject it to another. 

35. (4.) Further, the power of the will would be shown if, 
besides being able to summon objects as occasions of motives 
into its presence, and to select any one of these as an object of 
attention, the effect of that attention should be to render our 
perception of that object more vivid than it would otherwise be. 



PROGRESSION. 123 

« The first effect of our attention," says Dr. Chalmers * " is the 
brightening of that object to which it is directed, or rather, the 
clearer view which we ourselves acquire of it. There is not a 
greater quantity of light upon that which we are looking to, but 
the look itself makes the same quantity of hght serve the pur- 
pose of a more distinct and luminous perception." The differ- 
ence of effect between a vague reverie in which a whole train 
of mental objects gUdes along indistinctly, and a vigorous effort 
of attention in which the mind is concentrated on one of these 
objects, is just that which follows from glancing carelessly at a 
landscape when deepening in the shades of evening, and that 
which arises from singling out one of the figures of the land- 
scape, approaching it, and making it for a while the exclusive 
object of regard — that is, it gi-adually detaches itself from the 
surrounding objects with which it had appeared confounded, and 
assumes and reveals its own definite outline. And then, not 
merely is the emotion excited by an object, a summons to at- 
tend to it, but the effect of our attending to it is, very generally, 
and up to a certain point, an increase of emotion. And thus 
the will, besides exercising an influence anterior to the emotion 
by calling for objects of thought likely to excite it, can then ex- 
ert its power in the presence of these objects by selecting any 
one of them, and confining its attention to that, and then show 
its power over that selected object by so holding it before the 
mind as to render it the occasion of deep interest and emotion. 

36. Now these laws of the will in respect to the emotions, 
disclose the secret of the error of those who aflQrm that belief is 
an involuntary, and therefore an irresponsible act, as well as the 
ground on which it may be boldly met with the counter-aflSrma- 
tion, that man is accountable for his belief. " The state of mind 
which constitutes belief is, indeed, one over which the will has 
no direct power. But belief depends upon evidence ; the result 
of even the best evidence is entirely dependent on attention ; 
and attention is a voluntary intellectual state over which we 
have a direct and absolute control. As it is, therefore, by pro- 
longed and continued attention that evidence produces belief, a 
man may incur the deepest guilt by his disbehef of truths which 
he has failed to examine with the care which is due to them."t 



* Moral Philosophy, chap. v. p. 195. The whole of this chapter, " On 
the Morality of the Emotions," and of the preceding one, " On the Com- 
mand which the Will has over the Emotions," are of great value. 

t Abercrombie's Moral Feelings, p. 182. 



124 MAK. 

While man is by no means responsible for the evidence of the 
thing to be beheved or disbelieved, for the attention which he 
gives to it he is responsible ; for this is under the control of his 
will, and on this depends the presence or the absence of convic- 
tion. 

37. And here, also, we see the sense in which the apparently 
paradoxical proposition is strictly true, that behef precedes and 
prepares the way for the understanding. The evidence of the 
truth of a proposition is one thing, the meaning of the proposi- 
tion so evidenced is another ; the reception of the former may 
be indispensable to the comprehension of the latter. This is 
true in relation even to many of the phenomena of physical sci- 
ence. The fact of there being antipodes, is only one of the 
many truths which philosophy itself once pronounced to be " ut- 
terly inconceivable." And it was not until attention to the evi- 
dence of the fact had commanded belief, that the mind was 
enabled to conceive of the fact itself. The belief of the evidence 
of the fact, prepared the way for the apprehension and admis- 
sion of the fact itself. Still more generally does the same order 
obtain in the department of moral truth. The evidence of the 
fact of a Divine revelation, for example, is one thing ; the mean- 
ing of its contents is another. Now, he who erroneously denies 
that he is responsible for his belief, will surely admit that he is 
responsible for a sincere desire to know the truth. But this 
desire cannot be sincere if he do not accord to the evidences of 
revelation the attention which its importance deserves. This at- 
tention is a voluntary exercise, and this voluntary exercise, issuing 
in belief, provides, in the meaning of the revelation whose claims 
are admitted, a new object of attention of transcendent interest, 
which attention, again, is, at least, one of the conditions of rightly 
understanding it. And thus it is that a man's moral state influences 
his intellectual conclusions ; and that there may be guilt attached 
to his ignorance, his judgments, and his beliefs, because his atten- 
tion never took the initial step for arriving at the truth, or because 
he voluntarily took that step in a state of mind for which he 
was responsible, and which could ensure only a wrong result. 

38. (5.) Still further is the importance of the will in the won- 
derful economy of the mind illustrated by the fact that while 
one emotion continues, and in proportion to its intensity, the 
mind is incapable of receiving impressions from extraneous ob- 
jects. The attention, in the very act of fastening its eye on a 
single object withdraws the mind from the objects which lie 
around it ; and, then, in proportion to the light with which that 



O 



PROGRESSION. 125 

attention invests that object, all the surrounding objects are 
eclipsed and disappear. Hence it is that the attention of two 
persons may be fixed on apparently the same object, and yet 
they may be affected in a manner diametrically opposite. Let 
the object be supposed to present the twofold aspect of suffer- 
ing and unsightliness, and the explanation is, that the attention 
of one was so riveted on the suffering that he heeded not the 
unsightliness, and that the attention of the other was so en- 
grossed by the unsightliness that he was blind to the suffering. 

39. The great advantage, and, as we believe, the Divine 
design of this arrangement is, that the man might persevere in 
the comparatively undistracted study cf one subject till it be 
understood, or rightly appreciated, before he passes on to 
another ; and that, as objects rank very variously in importance, 
he might be able to award the right amount of regard to the 
superior without being diverted by the inferior, and to the infe- 
rior, when necessary, without being entirely engrossed by the 
superior. To the same law it is owing, that the exhibition to 
the mind of a new class of truths or facts may become the 
means of entirely displacing objects which had previously 
engrossed the attention. This makes a gradual change of the 
character possible. Surrounded by a new objective let down 
from Heaven, the mind which had looked only at the sensible 
and the passing, may come to " look, not at the things which 
are seen, but at the things which are not seen " and " eternal." 

40. (6.) The power of the will would be considerably in- 
creased if it were the tendency both of emotion to become 
weaker by repetition, and of voluntary acts to become easier 
and mo/e frequent by repetition. Now, this is found to be 
actually the case. The frequent repetition of any mechanical 
act, at stated periods, renders it more and more facile, till at 
length it comes to be accomplished almost unconsciously, and 
leaves the performer at liberty to attend to other things while 
he is doing it In a similar manner, the more frequently the 
thoughts are voluntarily turned into a given channel, and a vir- 
tuous act is consequently performed, the less vividly is the 
emotion felt which first attracted the thoughts in that direction, 
and prompted to that action ; and the less necessary is it for 
the will to put forth an effort to induce us to perform it. This 
is the law of the momentous power of Habit. And the end 
gained by it is obvious. The design of external objects is, 
through the medium of thought, to produce emotions, and the 
object of these is under the determining power of the will, to 



12^6 MAN. 

lead to outward action. But when the action has become easy 
and familiar, the emotion is no longer, to the same degree, 
necessary. When the scene of wretchedness to which we were 
at first attracted bj deep and even painful commiseration, has 
been frequented so often that our visits have become habitual, 
where would be the advantage or necessity of the painful emo- 
tion ? The intensity of the feeling gradually diminishes, and 
is exchanged Tor the habit of active benevolence. 

41. The advantages of this wise arrangement are numerous. 
It leaves the emotional part of our nature free to be attracted in 
a new direction, and to be excited by fresh objects of interest ; 
and as we are capable of only a hmited measure of excitement, 
this economizing of our sensibility is of great importance to our 
progress in knowledge and virtue. It tends to prepare us to 
look beyond the visible and the present for objects commensu- 
rate with our capacity of enjoyment. As mere sublunary ob- 
jects of interest are necessarily limited, and the interest which 
they excite of comparatively brief duration, the mind is left at 
liberty to look on into other worlds for objects of imperishable 
interest. It warns us not to rest in the barren luxury of emo- 
tion, but to advance at once to the action which is the appro- 
priate end of that emotion ; since emotions not only begin to 
subside from the moment they reach a certain point (so that it 
is of the utmost importance to acquire the habit of performing 
that action before the languor commences), but, if neglected to 
be carried on into the appropriate action, that languor proceeds 
all the more rapidly till it terminates in insensibiUty. Hence, 
the fearful consequence of indulging in that species of reading 
which excites a sympathy never to be carried out into benevo- 
lent conduct ; and of being often excited by the preaching of 
the gospel without taking a step towards genuine repentance ; 
and of habitually witnessing dramatic exhibitions for the mere 
sake of emotional excitement — the excitement terminating only 
in sentimental tears, and in cheap verbal lamentations over 
imaginary woes, while the suffering race, the world of real woe, 
for which those tears were designed, is forgotten and passed by 
with callous indifference. It renders our perseverance in a 
right course of action, the longer we continue in it, more and 
more certain. Virtue becomes increasingly subjective. Each 
act of goodness imparts new strength to the will, and renders it 
more certain that the act will be repeated. Another conse- 
quence of this arrangement is that we come to possess " greater 
moral power, while the given action itself requires less moral 



O 



PRO GtlES SIGN. 127 

effort. There hence arises a surplus of moral power which 
may be applied " * to higher courses and nobler acts of virtue. 
Not only is the power by which it gave impulse to an inferior 
course of action set at liberty, there is also the power acquired 
by that effort to be added to it. And thus is it ever presenting 
us with the strongest incentives to a right course of action. 
For, if eveiy act tends to the formation of habit, and if every 
habit goes to form character and to render it unalterable, who 
can calculate the interminable consequences attached to every 
moral voluntary act. 

42. But the same arrangement which is so advantageous for 
the virtuous, becomes, in the experience of the vicious, a means 
of fearful punishment. Every act of sin tends to repeat itself, 
and to render the whole man more vicioas. Each sinful indul- 
gence yields an ever-diminishing amount of gratification, though 
the passions which demand it are ever growing in tyrannic 
strength. Thus their evil character is gradually approaching a 
state of unchangeableness. And often it happens, that a voice 
from within has pronounced it unalterable, long before the voice 
without authoritatively confii-ms the sentence in the fearful 
words, " He that is unholy, let him be unholy still." 

43. (7.) If such be the power of the will in relation to the 
emotions, it may be expected (as, indeed, we have taken for 
granted) that it will possess the means of exemplifying its in- 
ternal activity by corresponding external movements of the 
body. To will, indeed, is to act ; for to act, is to put forth a 
power ; and this the will does in every volition. Hence, if a 
man will to move his arm, and the arm be paralytic and inca- 
pable of motion, still the will, the moving power, has acted ; all 
that is wanting in such a case is an external physical movement 
in obedience to the internal act of the will. " If there were no 
external world," remarks Cousin, f " there would be no com- 
pleted action ; and not only is it necessary that there should 
be an external world, but also that the power of willing should 
be connected with another power, a physical power, which 
serves as an instrument, and by which it can attain the external 
world. Suppose that the will were not united with an organi- 
zation, there would no longer be any bridge between the will 
and the external world; and no external action would be 

* Elements of Moral Science, by F. Wayland, D. D., President of 
Brown University, &c. — c. iii. § 2, an excellent treatise, 
t Elements of Psychology, c. x. 



128 MAN. 

possible." Now, the muscular system has been placed entirely 
at the service of the will. As the will is the executive power 
of the mind, the muscular system is its appointed and obedient 
instrument ; and hence the loss of command over any part of it 
by disease, is the loss of so much means of carrying our voli- 
tions into external effect. 

44. One fact there is connected with this mysterious arrange- 
ment worthj^ of our attention — that, in obedience to the will, 
this muscular organization should equally express what we will 
to do and to have done, and what we will not to do and not to 
have done. Pre-eminently is this the fact in relation to one 
part of this organization — the tongue. Not only is it capable 
of expressing, at the bidding of the will, what we would and 
what we would not have, but of conveying to others the know- 
ledge alike of the propensities of the inferior part of our nature, 
of the perceptions, judgments, and ideas of the intellect, of the 
varying play of the emotions, and of all the movements of the 
internal world, with which the wiU perhaps has had nothing to 
do but to keep them in check, and to cause them to be described 
and imparted through the medium of speech. But this the will 
has to do with them. And it is because the tongue has so wide 
a range in relation to the movements of the world within, and 
forms so ample and efficient a medium of communication with 
the world without, that its government, whether in a personal, 
social, or religious point of view, is of such vast importance. 
And as that government is given into our own power, being 
placed under the control of the will,, we can account for the em- 
phatic declaration of an apostle, " that he who offends not with 
his tongue, the same is a perfect man." 

45. (8.) Lastly, the power of the will in the individual 
would be indefinitely augmented by acting in harmony with 
other wills. The man in whom the will so far exerts its au- 
thority as to permit no explosions of passion, and no yielding 
to temptation, but who controls the forces within him, and 
" governs his own spirit," is pointed at by the finger of Inspira- 
tion itself as a model of power. By placing himself in har- 
mony with the laws of nature, which are themselves expres- 
sions of the Divine will, he can greatly increase his power. 
By resisting them, he would only diminish his own proper 
power, and lose the use perhaps of some of those muscular or- 
gans and instruments which are already placed at the disposal 
of his own personal will ; but by falling in with them, and avail- 
ing himself of them, he can, in effect, multiply these organs 



r^ 



progsession. 129 

and instruments ; can appropriate and arm himself with many 
of the forces of nature, and become the will, the moving power, 
of many of its laws, as to when they shall act, and when they 
shall not. Beyond this, he can add to his own the musculao* 
forces of other men, by uniting his will with theirs in a com- 
munity of purpose. He and they can freely will to do this. 
Influenced by the same motives, they can determine on the 
same end, and move together like one man towards it. How 
important that others should thus feel and -will with us, in order 
that the injustice which one man could not restrain single- 
handed, might be successfully repelled by the union of many ! 
How important is this union in order that the good which we 
are unable to accomplish separately, others may help us to 
perform ! Hence, it was contemplated *n the primal benedic- 
tion, as the means by which the earth should be replenished 
and subdued to man's dominion. And wherever it has existed 
for any length of time, nothing has been able to stand before it. 
46. But only let us imagine this community of wills to exist 
in relation, not merely to some particular objects, however good, 
but to some central object, around which all those particular 
objects revolve, and to which they are subservient. Let us 
conceive these wills to be moving harmoniously together, not 
merely towards an end, however good, but towards the end for 
which all other ends exist, and exist only as means. Let us 
suppose this community of created wills to be ever moving in 
harmony with the Central and Supreme Will of the Creator ; 
to regard each indication of His will as the loftiest motive for 
their wills ; each movement of His as the broad and open path 
of freedom for theirs ; let us suppose even their desires to be 
so accordant with their wills that in uttering the language of 
the one they should be giving expression to the other, and that 
the language most expressive of their united and highest en- 
ergy should be — Thy will he done — Thy will, as the only 
means of satisfying our wiDs ; and, in order that our wills — our 
whole nature — may find perfection ! What a sublime spectacle 
would such a scene present ! — a race of free creatures finding 
the very perfection of happiness and freedom in the perfection 
of obedience ! finding, and exulting to find, that the act in which 
they put forth their highest energy and their noblest assertion 
of hberty, was, at the same time, the act most perfectly in har- 
mony with the Divine will, and with all the laws of created 
nature ! God, nature, and man, in universal activity, but ex- 
hibiting the harmony of a single Force ! 



ISO MAN. 

47. But even suppose that only a single human will were in 
strict accordance with that supreme will, who does not see that, 
by moving in a line with it, everything else in accordance with 
it would be one with that finite will ? — all the mechanical laws 
of nature would be one with it. Hence, "the beasts of the field" 
are said to be "in covenant with him;" "the stars in their 
courses fight for him ;" and " even his enemies are," under cer- 
tain circumstances, " at peace v»dth him." He takes all nature 
with him ; because nature, hke himself, is moving in harmony 
with the will of God ; and he takes, if not the wills, the con- 
sciences of "his enemies" with him also. And the longer he 
continues to identify his will with the Divine will, the more un- 
alterable becomes his habit of obedience, until his moral charac- 
ter, like that of God, assumes the regularity and constancy of 
moral necessity. While the prayer of Scriptural faith is repre- 
sented as actually giving him "power with God," the Supreme 
will unites with his will, and becomes a new antecedent to new 
and unexpected consequents. 

48. Having already, in the preceding paragraph, indulged in 
remarks somewhat in advance of what the subject requires, I 
may be permitted, in the same strain, to call attention to the 
manner in which the Scriptures assume all these laws of the 
will, or take their existence for granted. For example: can 
the will either indirectly repel, or call for, objects of thought, 
Which are sure to excite corresponding emotions ? we are ex- 
horted to stand aloof from certain things, lest they should inju- 
riously affect us, and we are to set our affections on objects of a 
different order. Can we select one object out of many, and 
mentally dwell on it ? we are exhorted to " distinguish between 
things that differ," to make the right selection of things on \A'hich 
the mind is to dwell ; to " keep our hearts," in this respect, 
" with all diligence," remembering that every object admitted 
into them will leave its print there. Do objects affect us in 
proportion as we attend to them? we are to "take heed how we 
hear," and are held responsible, on the pain of perdition, for not 
believing the Gospel. Ai'e emotions to be carried out into 
action, and to lead to the formation of habits ? we are reminded 
that "pure religion is this," not merely to talk of the suffering, 
not to shed fruitless tears over unseen woes, nor even to give 
money for their relief (for that may not be in our power, or 
may be done without sympathy), but "to visit the fatherless and 
the widow" — to cultivate active benevolence. Is the muscular 
system placed at the service of the will? we are to "bow our 



O 



PROGRESSION. 131 

ear" to receive instruction; and to "yield our members as in- 
struments of righteousness unto God." Can our wills mutually 
harmonize ? the church is the community instituted expressly 
to exhibit the sublime spectacle we have described; and the 
glory of God is the great end which is to harmonize and unite 
them. In a word, can the finite will accord with the Infinite ? 
It must live in the contemplation, and move daily in the presence 
of that ethereal purity and unclouded glory, which transforms 
the beholder into its own image. 



Sect. VII. — Conscience. 

1. In the preceding section, we behold the introduction of that 
novelty in the created universe, — at least in this part of the 
Divine dominions, — an intelligent will. In our previous survey 
of the progressive unfolding of the Divine scheme, we started 
from the Infinite and Only Will, in which the whole had origi- 
nated, and, descending regularly from link to link in a pro- 
longed chain of causes and effects, we had encountered nothing 
capable of being anything else than clay in the hands of the pot- 
ter. Now, however, we have come to another will : to a being 
who is not only capable of intelligently examining that chain, 
though he himself, as far as all but his will is concerned, forms 
a part of it, but capable, also, by means of his will, of disturbing 
and putting himself out of harmony with it, — of putting even 
the inferior part of his own nature in opposition to it. Here, 
then, in the bare possibility of this opposition is a hypothetical 
effect, of which nothing in the antecedent chain can be regarded 
as the cause. There, in truth, is, in some sense, a cause, or a 
power hypothetically opposing itself to the First Cause. For, 
if the production of the natural universe be traceable to a cause 
— the Will of God — the possibility of disturbing it, or of con- 
sciously taking anything out of harmony with it, must obviously 
originate in a cause also ; certainly, it could not originate in one 
of the mechanical links of the pre-existing chain. 

2. Owing to this new power alone it is that man can form the 
idea of a First Cause. The fact that he himself possesses a will, 
is revealed to him exclusively by its own acts ; and this gives to 
him the idea of a cause, of a power capable of originating an act 
or state. He is conscious that in willing, he, though influenced 
and conditioned by motives, originates and constitutes an actual 
beginning, and as there is no example of this in the phenomena 



132 MAN. 

of Nature, he can only refer their origination to a Supreme 
Will. 

3. But while these phenomena are consecutive, and exist in 
linked continuity, his will, for the reason assigned, claims imme- 
diate descent from the Divine Will, and direct alliance with it. 
The Divine Will originated them all ; man's Will is above them 
all. But for the Infinite Will, creation could not have taken 
place ; but for the Finite Will, the existence of that Infinite 
Will, as the originating power of creation, would have been 
unknown ; so that no manifestation would have been possible. 
Wanting in the human will, therefore, creation would have been 
defective in the principal respect; for the very image and know- 
ledge of the Will in which the whole had originated, would have 
been wanting. In the human will alone does God behold and 
manifest the reflection of His own will. 

4. But by the possession of a will representative of the Divine 
Will, man ceases to be a thing, and becomes a person. Destitute 
of this attribute, he might be used or employed as a means to 
an end ; but, possessed of it, he could not be so employed, with- 
out doing violence to this distinctive part of his nature, for it 
would be against his will. He is now a being who has, con- 
sciously, an end and object of his own, and, as such, a person. 
For, as God is his own end in that scheme of manifestation 
which originated in his Divine Will, so, by right of his finite 
representative will, man is not merely a means for the attain- 
ment of this end : he is capable of seeking his own end, and of 
subordinating everything created and inferior to it, though he is 
made to find the true end of his own existence only by seeking 
it in perfect coincidence with the great end. 

5. And, for doing this, he is to be held accountable. In giv- 
ing him a will, a foundation was laid for his responsibility. Up 
to that point he was irresponsible, because mechanical and 
powerless. But the bestowment of a will — grave and awful 
privilege! — gave the other parts of his nature into his own 
keeping, placed the most sacred trust in creation — his character 
— in his own hands. Still, though man is a voluntary being, 
and though this element of his nature is indestructible and ina- 
lienable, free agency alone does not constitute and complete his 
accountableness. This is only the executive power of the mind. 
If there be a right and a wrong, and if every voluntary act be 
the one or the other, it is essential, in order to responsibility, 
that the free agent should know what he ought and what he 
ought not to do. In other words, if man is to be a manifestation 



PROGRESSION. 133 

of the Divine character as well as of the Divine will, and is to 
be held accountable for voluntarily harmonizing with the Di- 
vine manifestation, it may be expected that he will be capable 
of a consciousness of obligation in every instance in which he 
has the means of subserving the great end. 

6. The phraseology here employed indicates that we are now 
entering on a new region of truth — that we have left the quid 
est, and have reached the quid oportet, the province of ethics or 
moral science. " The purpose of the physical sciences through- 
out all their provinces, is to answer the question, What is? 
The purpose of the moral sciences is to answer the question, 
What ought to he ?"* It is of the first importance, however, to 
the correct view of our subject, to bear in mind that moral 
science itself branches off into two similar divisions. In this 
department, the question. What is ? relates to the eternal and 
immutable distinction of right and wrong — to the foundation 
and principle of moral obligation, a foundation and a principle 
which existed anterior to creation, and which would continue 
to exist were the universe of creatures to sink into annihilation-; 
while the question, What ought to he ? relates to the moral con- 
stitution and conduct of the creature. No one has insisted 
more cogently on the necessity of steadily abiding by this dis- 
tinction than the writer himself just quoted- When once it is 
recognized, indeed, it seems to be so obvious, as to render illus- 
tration unnecessary. And yet such men as Paley and Hume, 
Bentham and A. Smith, have either failed uniformly to make 
the discrimination, or else have entirely confounded the two 
branches of the subject together. 

7. That branch of the subject with which we have at present 
to do, relates to the latter of the two questions stated — not to 
the nature and foundation of rectitude, but to the process or 
faculty by which we are made capable of recognizing and re- 
sponding to it. The question. What constitutes virtue ? is quite 
distinct from our present inquiry — ffow does man derive the 
notion of virtue ? Virtue has an objective existence independent 
of the subjective mind which takes cognizance of it. Rectitude 
is not a creature. From eternity it has resided in Him in 
whom fact and right are one. Man is a creation of God, and 
his mind is made to appreciate that rectitude. The constitution 
of his mind, then, is a subject of inquiry as distinct from the 
foundation and principle of the rectitude for which it is made, 

* Sir J. Mackintosh's " Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy," Introduction. 

12 



134 MAN. 

as his faculty of reasoning is from the figures and truths of geome- 
try, which he feels to be independently and eternally neces- 
sary.* 

8. In accordance with this important distinction, and with the 
terms of our general proposition, it may be shown, first, that 
man universally recognizes a moral quality in actions. The 
same action may be viewed in different lights — as clever or 
foolish, seasonable or unseasonable, polite or uncourteous. But 
besides this, the mind is capable of recognizing in it a quality 
which no terms can express but those of right or wrong. And 
this distinction is universal. When once the idea is developed 
in the mind, it is never entirely lost. The same mind cannot 
regard the same quality of an action as right and wrong, just 
and unjust, at the same time. The two ideas resist every at- 
tempt at such commutation. Their objects may change with 
circumstances, but their nature never. Even the professional 
infanticide of a barbarous clime pursues his horrid calling, not 
as wrong, but right — not merely as a right (the noun instead 
of the adjective, with which it is often confounded) acquired by 
custom or law ; but as being, for certain supposed reasons, ad- 
jectively right. And the criminal whose life may appear to 
have been spent in a laborious endeavor to confound the dis- 
tinction between right and wrong, confidently calculates, when 
called to trial, on justice ; he assumes, that is, that the sentiment 
of right and wrong is common to man, and that which he de- 
mands is right. If he is to be punished, he assumes that jus- 
tice is something anterior to punishment, and he demands to 
be punished according to justice. Indeed, the ideas of reward 
and punishment invariably presuppose the ideas of merit and 
demerit, and these again presuppose the ideas of right and 
wrong, terms designating a quality or distinction in actions 
which man universally recognizes. 

9. This view of conscience answers, by anticipation, the sup- 
posed objection to the universality of conscience, that the moral 
judgments of men widely differ respecting the same actions. 
Had we represented conscience as a faculty divinely empowered 
to divide all external actions into two classes, and to pronounce 
infallibly that every action of the one class was right, and every 
action of the other class wrong, our statement would have been 
liable to the objection. But regarded as the faculty which re- 
cognizes a moral quality in actions, we know of no exception to 

* Dr. Chalmers's Bridgewater Treatise, Vol. I. p. 72. 



r^ 



PROGRESSION. 135 

its universality. Many of the very practices erroneously ad- 
duced to prove the non-existence of conscience in certain par- 
ties, are the expedients ignorantly resorted to in the hope of 
appeasing its remorse. The Thugs of India did not strangle 
their human victims, because they beheved murder to be an in- 
nocent act ; but under the notion that they were offering an ac- 
ceptable sacrifice to Kalee, the goddess of destruction, and that 
the strangled victim went directly to Paradise. The most de- 
graded of mankind are found to recognize a moral quality in 
actions, however mistaken they may be, owing to their perverted 
judgments, in its specific selection. 

10. Granting the universality of conscience, the want of uni- 
formity in its decisions may be objected to, as greatly detracting 
from its value. To which we reply, first, that perfect objective 
uniformity, amidst an endless variety of disturbing influences 
could only be secured by investing conscience with a dictatorial 
power destructive of all responsibihty. Secondly, the moral 
differences which actually obtain among men, relate, not so 
much to whether a certain action shall be regarded as virtuous 
or vicious, as to whether one of two qualities, of which both are 
admitted to be right, may not be sacrificed to the other. Thus, 
when theft was publicly taught and rewarded in Sparta, it was 
not because honesty was not deemed a virtue, but because patri- 
otism was deemed a greater virtue, and therefore the dexterous 
robbery of an enemy was honored at the price of honesty, as a 
service rendered to the state.* Nor, thirdly, is the extinction 
of conscience to be inferred; from the spectacle of a multitude of 
men madly rushing into the same crime, any more than the non- 
existence of the passions is to be inferred from their subjection 
to control. Their moral judgment respecting it may be one 
with our own, when the judgment shall be allowed to speak ; 
even if their present impetuosity of conduct is not to be inter- 
preted as an attempt to silence the present uneasiness of their 
conscience. Nor, fourthly, is anything other than the temporary 
perversion of conscience to be inferred from the deliberate and 
continued practice of certain crimes, a perversion produced only 
as the result of example and instruction. The patient training 
of the Indian Thug did not permit the apprentice to the trade of 
murder to witness the horrid rites till the third year of service ; 
implying that it required all that time to murder conscience, or 

* Sir J. Mackintosh's Dissertation, § i. See also Dr. T. Brown's 74th 
and 75th Lectures. 



136 MAN. 

rather to bribe it to silence. And, fifthly, it is to be borne in mind 
that even where conscience is thus temporarily drugged to 
silence on some one point of morality — drugged by an opiate 
administered in the name of morality or religion — it is always 
liable to awake, or waiting to respond to a monitory call ; while, 
apart from such temporary and local exceptions, the same vir- 
tues are honored, and the same vices execrated, with remarka- 
ble uniformity, in every part of the world. 

11. "The principles upon which men reason in morals (says 
Hume) are always the same, though their conclusions are often 
very different." The uniformity which obtains even among the 
laws of nations can be accounted for only by supposing a com- 
mon moral nature. " Whatever variety may be discovered," 
says Michelet, in his origin of French Law, " unity predomi- 
nates. It is an imposing spectacle to find the principal legal 
symbols common to all countries, throughout all ages. In truth, 
to one who considers not the human race as the great family of 
God, there is in those multitudinous voices, out of hearing of 
each other, and which, nevertheless, respond each to each from 
the Indus to the Thames in reciprocating sounds, wherewithal 
to dismay the intelligence, to strike the heart and spirit of man 
with consternation. Transporting was the emotion which I my- 
self experienced, when, for the first time, I heard this universal 
acclaim. Unlike the sceptic Montaigne, who so carefully fer- 
reted out the customs of different nations to detect their moral 
discordances, I have found a consentaneous harmony among 
them all. A sensible miracle has risen before me. My little 
existence of the moment has seen and touched the eternal com- 
munion of the human race." Even if morality were a question 
to be decided by vote, it would be much more rational to con- 
clude that, since a thousand to one agree concerning a given 
action that it is wrong, therefore the action has a recognizable 
moral character, than that it has not because one in a thousand 
differs. And such subjective uniformity actually exists amidst 
aU the objective varieties of its manifestation which the world 
presents. 

12. The inquiry. What are the means by which man recog- 
nizes and responds to the moral quahty of actions ? is, as ob- 
served already, entirely distinct from the question. What is that 
moral quality itself, or, what is virtue ? Yet so generally, in 
ethical discussions, has the former been involved in, and con- 
founded with, the latter, that, in order to ascertain the opinions 
which have been entertained on the subject, we shall not be able 



O 



PROGRESSION. 137 

to avoid a glance in passing at some of the theories of virtue in 
which these opinions are implied. 

13. Is our notion of morality derived from our acquaintance 
with human law ? According to Hobbes, virtue is only a syno- 
nyme for political law ; actions have no moral character prior 
to human legislation. But this is to confound a right acquired 
by law, with right independent of law. 

14. According to another theory, morality is founded, not on 
the will of man, but on the will of God. But, in the language 
of Aquinas, " though God always wills what is just, nothing is 
just solely because he wills it." We believe, indeed, not only 
that every command of God is in perfect harmony with recti- 
tude, but that the rectitude is the reason of the command. Now, 
both these theories of the nature of virtue — the first creating it 
by human law, and the second by Divine law, though materially 
differing from each other, may be regarded as basing morality 
on arbitrary appointment; and as consequently reducing the 
means necessary to recognize morality to a mere acquaintance 
with such appointment. But as man recognizes moral distinc- 
tions independently of such external knowledge, the true solu- 
tion of the problem must be sought further. 

15. Is our notion of a moral quality in actions derived from 
the arbitrary constitution of our minds, independently of any 
such quality in the actions themselves ? This is a consequence 
which has been charged on Hutcheson's theory of a moral 
sense ; for if a thing be right only as it gives rise to a constitu- 
tional feeling of approbation, it foUows" that a change in our 
moral constitution would originate a corresponding change in 
the nature of rectitude. According to Adam Smith, we judge 
of the actions of others by a direct, and of our own, by a reflex, 
sympathy; those with which we fully sympathize are right. 
But this again is to make virtue depend on the constitution of 
the mind, and renders all morality relative. In a similar man- 
ner, virtue, according to Dr. T. Brown, is a mere abstraction, 
expressive only of the relation between a certain action and a 
certain emotion. From which it would follow that virtue has 
no objective reality ; and the relations of right and wrong might 
have been reversed by the mere reversal of our personal feeling 
of approbation. 

16. These three theories are, in effect, only modifications of 
the last of the preceding two, which makes virtue a creature 
of arbitrary legislation. The principal difference appears to be 
that whereas in that theory the Divine command is objective and 

12* 



188 MAN. 

is imposed upon the creature ; according to this, it is subjective, 
or expressed inherently in the original constitution of the mind ; 
each, however, agreeing in this, that an action whether externally 
enjoined or internally approved, might have been the very 
opposite of what it is, and yet have been virtuous. With the 
objectionableness of this theory, however, as a theory of virtue, 
we have nothing at present to do, except as it bears on the an- 
swer to our inquiry — Is our notion of a moral quahty in actions 
owing entirely to the arbitrary constitution of our minds ? Ad- 
hering, as our consciousness compels us, to the conviction that 
we recognize in actions an inherent moral quality which is quite 
independent of such recognition, we could not admit the affirm- 
ative of the question without implying that our moral nature 
consists of a moral deception. Our moral faculty protests 
against the possibility of such an imposition. Having recog- 
nized the rectitude of an action, we feel, in the depths of our 
consciousness, that it would and must be right, even though we 
had been denied the power of perceiving it. We feel that it is 
right, anterior to, and independently of j our perception of it ; 
and that our perception of it is simply owing to a certain faculty 
with which we are endowed for that purpose. 

17. Is our nation of morality the result of intellectual intuition ? 
According to Cumberland,* the professed antagonist of Hobbism, 
certain propositions of unchangeable truth, or laws of nature, 
prompt us to social morality ; obedience to these principles is 
virtue ; and these are " necessarily suggested to the minds of 
men ; " or are the direc4 product of " right reason." Cud worth f 
resolves virtue into an agreement with the ideas which have 
existed eternally and immutably in the infinite mind. Dr. S. 
Clarke I regarded it as an agreement with the eternal relations 
finesses of things. According to WoUaston, § virtue consists 
in conformity, to truih, or to the truth of things. Now all these 
writers differ from the class preceding, in regarding right and 
wrong as words representing real characters of actions, and not 
mere qualities of our minds — what actions are in themselves, 
and not the feelings or sensations attending them. And they 
agree with each other, not merely in thus regarding virtue as 

* See his " Philosophical Inquiry into the Laws of Nature." 
t " Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality." 
X " Being and Attributes of God ; and Evidence of Natural and Revealed 
Beligion." 

i Author of " The Beligion of Nature Delineated:' 



PROGRESSION. 139 

an objective reality — as eternal and imtoiitable in the objects 
to which the word is applied — but also in regarding our per- 
ception of it as intellectually direct and necessary. Whether 
represented as necessarily suggested to the mind, or as contem- 
plated in the mind of God, or as perceived immediately like a 
mathematical truth, they unite in making the recognition of it a 
purely intellectual operation.* 

We have therefore to allege against them, in common, 
that they overlook the voluntary and emotive part of our nature. 
That virtue does coincide with nature, reason, truth, order, and 
the fitness of things, we confidently believe, but it coincides 
with something more. To say that our idea of virtue is given 
us in a purely intellectual act or intuition, by no means satisfies 
the requirements of the case. It leaves us to a state of passive 
contemplation. Our consciousness of moral obligation and ap- 
probation remains unexplained. In our recognition of moral 
qualities we are conscious of more than an intellectual percep- 
tion. 

18. Is our idea of the moral quality of actions derived from 
the exercise of the judgment ? According to Dr. Wardlaw, the 
faculty which decides on the right and wrong in actions is the 
judgment.f Dr. Payne applies the term conscience to "the 
susceptibility of experiencing those emotions of approbation and 
disapprobation \ which are consequent on the prior decision of 
the judgment. My own conviction is, on grounds to be here- 
after stated, that the function of moral discrimination, and the 
susceptibility of consequent emotions, both belong to the province 
of conscience — a view to which Dr. Wardlaw expresses himself 
as by no means averse. More than mere judgment appears to be 
necessary, in the case supposed, if the term be taken in its 
strict and logical acceptation. Thus, if judgment be that act of 
the mind which affirms a relation between two notions previ- 
ously existing in the mind, no one can affirm that the sky is 
blue unless the notion of the sky and of the color which he 
predicates of it, be first in his mind. And no man who had no 
previous idea of right and wrong, could ever affirm either of 
these qualities of an action ; " much less could he by this faculty, 



* Malebranche's " Love of Order," and Jonathan Edwards's " Love of 
Being," might have placed them in tlie same category as far as their ob- 
jective abstractions, order and being, are concerned ; but by employing the 
term hve^ their theory of virtue ceased to be merely intellectual. 

t Christian Ethics, Lect. V. X Mental and Moral Science, p. 404. 



140 MATS". 

acquire the original idea." Butler, indeed, is supposed by some 
to have regarded conscience merely as the exercise of judgment 
in the department of morals. " There is (says the Bishop) a 
principle of reflection in ipen by which they distinguish bet^veen, 
approve, and disapprove, their own actions." * But the very 
fact that he here and elsewhere speaks of conscience as a dis- 
tinct principle in man, seems to negative such a supposition. 
And the office which he assigns to conscience, of not merely dis- 
tinguishing between actions, but of also approving and disap- 
proving — or else of distinguisliing by approving and disappro- 
ving them — implies that if the act is intellectual it is emotional 
also. The commanding power likewise with which he regards 
conscience as invested, intimates that, in his view, its province 
is not merely discriminating and intellectual, but also imper- 
ative. 

19. Is our idea of morality derived from a principle of asso- 
ciation ? According to Hartley, the formation of our passions 
and affections, and even of our sentiments of virtue and duty, 
takes place by means of " the association of ideas." With cer- 
tain modifications, Sir J. Mackintosh adopts this view. But 
though conscience is thus " acquired," he represents it as " uni- 
versally and necessarily acquired ; " and though not simple but 
compounded, " the language of all mankind (says he) implies 
that the moral faculty, whatever it may be, and from what 
origin soever it may spring, is inteUigibly and properly spoken 
of as one." But on this theory we may remark that the idea 
of right and wrong is, in the case supposed, a part of the com- 
pound. In the first moral association of which we are con- 
scious, its existence is presupposed. Besides, by affirming that 
the moral faculty is universally and necessarily acquired, it 
must be meant that the acquisition takes place in consequence 
of an original law of our nature, which universally and neces- 
sarily operates. " He supposes association," says Dr. Whewell, 
in his preface to the Dissertation, " to be employed in the edu- 
cation rather than in the creation of our moral sentiments." If 
this be, as it appears, a correct interpretation of the theory — 
if there be an original law of the mind which only needs edu- 
cation, and which, as the result of a necessary process, exhibits 
a growing power of recognizing the moral quahty of actions, 
the most questionable part of the theory disappears. That the 
moral faculty was designed to enlarge its domain as we advance 

* Sermon L 



PROGRESSION. 141 

from infancy to mature age, till we come to " make conscience 
of everything," there can be no doubt. One could wish, how- 
ever, to have been more particularly informed concerning the 
nature of that original law, which is supposed to become con- 
science only as it is developed by association. 

20. Is our idea of virtue derived from a calculation of conse- 
quences ? Opinions on this subject are divisible into the follow- 
ing clauses : — First, the theory of Hobbes* — properly desig- 
nated the selfish system — according to which, whatever pro- 
motes our own selfish interest is for that very reason right ; and 
whatever opposes it, wTong. To this it is sufficient to reply, in 
passing, with Butler, that there are the same kind of indications 
in human nature, that We were made to promote the happiness 
of others, as that we were made to promote our own. Indeed, 
the impeachment of tliis revolting view of morahty is implied 
in each of the theories which follows. 

21. Secondly, the Utihtarian theory of Hume makes virtue 
coincident with whatever is agreeable and useful to ourselves 
without injury to others, and to others without injury to our- 
selves. This is an obvious improvement on the selfish system, 
for it contemplates the advantage of others. Besides, Hume 
adds the term agreeable to that of useful ; which amounts to a 
virtual abandonment of the utilitarian character of the theory. 
For by leading us back to the question. On what is this feeling 
of agreeableness or approbation founded ? we find ourselves re- 
ferred to a principle distinct from that of utility. Indeed, to the 
existence of such a pnnciple repeated reference is found in his 
writings ;* as if its admission were involved in the very act of 
denying it. Bentham, too, the great advocate, in recent times, 
of utilitarianism under the name of the greatest-happiness prin- 
ciple, exhibits, by a happy inconsistency, the impossibility of 
dispensing with the word ought in ethical discussions. For, 
though repeatedly angry with the word, his work is denominated 
Deontology — meaning, the Science of Duty, or of what men 
ought to do. 

22. According to Paley in his theory of expediency, or of 
general consequences, " Yirtue is the doing good to mankind, in 
obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting 



* Thus, one of the sections in the third book of his " Treatise of Human 
Nature" is headed-, " Moral Distinctions derived from a Moral Sense." 
See also the first section of "4n Inquiry concerning the Principles of 

Morals." 



14,% >IAN. 

happiness."* This proposition appears to place virtue on high- 
er and nobler ground than that occupied by either of the pre- 
ceding theories ; for it recognizes the will of God and an eter- 
nal future. In reality, however, it is chargeable with a gross 
selfishness, which the doctrine of Hume condemns. It implies 
that every act is vicious which is not performed for the sake of 
the agent's own happiness ; and consequently, that the impulses 
of generosity and compassion should be repressed as being wor- 
thy of reprobation. In effect, too, it makes the " tendency to 
produce happiness " both the rule of virtue and its foundation ; 
for while professing to regard the will of God as the rule, it 
finds the test and standard of that rule in the " tendency to pro- 
duce happiness," because " God Almighty wills and wishes the 
happiness of his creatures."! 

23. The distinguished American divine. Dr. Dwight, places 
his theory of utility on still loftier ground. Disclaiming utility 
as the rule of virtue to us, he affirms that " virtue is founded in 
utiUty" J — meaning, by utiUty, a tendency to produce happi- 
ness. For, while contending that " the foundation of virtue is 
not in the will of God, but in the nature of things," and that 
" the foundation of virtue is that which constitutes its value and 
excellence," he finds this nature and excellence in virtue only 
as it is productive of happiness. This, however, is not to find 
the foundation of virtue in the nature of things, but in their ten- 
dency, and is to confound the intrinsic excellence of rectitude 
with its effects. As Dr. Wardlaw has well expressed it,§ " the 
principles of moral rectitude are not right because they produce 
happiness, they produce happiness because they are right ; their 
nature not arising from their tendency, but their tendency from 
their nature." 

24. In my remarks on this important subject, I would by no 
means imply that virtue may not ultimately coincide with utility 
. — the great moral law with the greatest happiness. It must 
be admitted that, even now, the expedient often proves to be 
right ; and that in regard to things morally indifferent, utility 
and expediency may allowably guide our determination. But 
this is widely different from saying that expediency is the crite- 
rion of rectitude, and utility to us the rule of morality. That 
our notion of the moral quality of actions, and of their conse- 
quent obligatoriness, are not, and cannot be derived from a con- 

* Moral and PoHt. Phil., Book L, c. vii. t B. 11., c. iv. 

X Theology, Serm. XCIX. § Christian Ethics, Lect. VI. 



^ 



PROGRESSION. 143 

sideration of their consequences, may be made evident from the 
following considerations : — 

25. First, it assumes that the production of the greatest 
amount of happiness is the controlling principle of the Divine 
government ; and that, if it be not, we are under no obligation 
to obey God. Perhaps (says Bishop Butler)* Divine good- 
ness, with which, if I mistake not, we make very free in our 
speculations, may not be a bare single disposition to produce 
happiness, but a disposition to make the good, the faithful, the 
honest man happy. Perhaps an infinitely perfect mind may be 
pleased with seeing his creatures behave suitably with the na- 
ture which he has given them, to the relations in which he has 
placed them to each other, and to that in which they stand to 
Himself ; that relation to Himself, which during their existence 
is ever necessary, and which is the most important one of all. 
I say an infinitely perfect mind may be pleased with this moral 
piety of moral agents in and for itself, as well as upon account 
of its being essentially conducive to the happiness of his crear 
tion." Not only does the idea we are opposing assume the 
reverse of all this independently of proof, but, further, if the 
happiness on which virtue is made to depend be the happiness of 
the universe, including the infinite God, it would follow that 
even His own holiness depends on his happiness, not that his 
happiness springs from his holiness. Nor even then could we 
be certain that an action would be right for us in proportion to 
its productiveness of happiness, except by taking it for granted, 
further, that our happiness is coincident with His. While the 
discovery that either of these assumptions was false would dis- 
charge us from all obligation to virtue, or else would show that 
we had mistaken its yhyj foundation. 

26. Secondly, the theory of utility — even in its least excep- 
tionable form — confounds together motive and obligation, the 
subjective and the objective, the intention of the agent and the 
intrinsic nature of the act. For if it be affirmed of an act that 
it is good because of its tendency to promote the general happi- 
ness, it follows that it is subjectively good or virtuous, owing to 
the motive of the agent to promote that end. In other words, 
virtue as an objective independent reality is annihilated, as well 
as the obUgation which belongs to it, and the motive of the agent 
usurps their place. 

27. Thirdly, the theory of utility, or of happiness, as the rule 

* Analogy, Part i., c. 2. 



144 MAN. 

of virtue, is incapable of general application in our hand. 
" Whatever is expedient, (says Paley,)* is right. But then it 
must be expedient upon the whole, at the long run, in all its 
effects, collateral and remote, as well as in those which are 
immediate and direct ; as it is obvious, that, in computing con- 
sequences, it makes no difference in what way, or at what distance 
they ensue." This might be almost regarded as a grave satire 
on the entire theory. It presumes on the presence and equal 
activity of quahties in which men are commonly most varied 
and deficient — those of foresight and intelligent comprehension. 
It overlooks the fact that man is, at present, in a state of things 
in which multiplied disturbing forces are in operation. " The 
individual is to imagine what the general consequences would 
be, all other things remaining the same, if all men were about 
to act as he is about to act. I scarcely need remind the reader, 
what a source of self-delusion and sophistry is here opened to a 
mind in a state of temptation ?"t Or if it relies on the com- 
bined and generalized results of human experience, these are 
inaccessible to the majority of mankind in almost every situa- 
tion in which they would be of any value ; and to the still greater 
majority of individual actions they are not applicable at all. 
And the theory in question everlooks the fact that, as every 
action embraces an infinity of relations, the Infinite mind alone 
can apply it. Taking advantage of this doctrine, infidel attempts 
have not been wanting to subvert the foundations of morality. 
Beausobre, for example, remarks, " the goodness of actions de- 
pends upon their consequences, which man cannot foresee, nor 
accurately ascertain." 

28. Fourthly, in its grosser form, the utilitarian theory is 
chargeable with disparaging even the great doctrine of motives. 
By placing virtue in the outward act, it confounds the morality 
of the agent with the law. It calls away the attention from that 
which we are, to that which we do ; and thus tends to patronize 
hypocrisy. It robs the benevolent of the virtue belonging to 
their good intentions; simply because their poverty or want 
of means may prevent them from carrying their intentions into 
effect. 

29. Fifthly, the theory under consideration overlooks the ef- 
fect of actions upon the moral state and habit of the mind. It 
implies, for example, in opposition to the general verdict of man- 

* Moral and Polit. Phil. Bk. 11. c. viii. 
t Coleridge's Friend, Vol. IT. Essay xl. 



PROGRESSION. 145 

kind, that happiness does not depend in the highest degree on 
the state of the mind ; that there are certain outward things on 
which happiness depends more than on the exercise of virtuous 
affections and principles ; for otherwise, the cuhivation of such 
principles must be regarded as an important independent object. 
And it implies also that outward actions do not flow from the 
affections and states of the mind ; otherwise the regulation and 
right state of the affections must be a distinct object of primary 
importance. Indeed, it is now generally admitted by utilitarian 
moralists, that in estimating the utility of an action, " its influ- 
ence on the agent's own mind," and " on the characters of other 
persons besides the agent," is to be taken into the account. But 
this concession, besides prescribing for the judgment a condition 
of very limited and precarious application, virtually abandons 
the theory which it is meant to modify ; for if the utility of an 
action consists partly in its promoting morality and confirming 
virtuous habits, it follows that virtue is a distinct good, worthy 
of being valued, and capable of being cultivated, for its own 
sake alone. 

30. From what has been said, it is evident,, sixthly, that the 
doctrine in question is open to the charge of logical inconsistency. 
What is the design of Paley in teaching that expediency is right, 
or of Bentham in affirming that the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number is the fundamental principle of human action, 
but to show that men ought to act on these views ? But why 
ought they to do so ? The answer may be, either, because it is 
their interest to promote their interest — which is a truism 
explaining nothing ; or else, because they are hound to aim at 
the general welfare — which is only equivalent to saying that it 
is their duty to do it ; thus presupposing moral obligation in the 
very act of denying it ; or assuming that moral quality in the 
premise, which they deny in the conclusion. 

31. Seventhly, the theory of utilitarianism confounds cause 
and effect, or the nature of virtue with its beneficial tendencies. 
That all the moralities are useful, we admit ; but to infer from 
this that utihty is the foundation of morality, is to jump to a 
most unwarrantable conclusion. " Man may be so constituted 
as instantaneously to approve certain actions without any refer- 
ence to their consequences, and yet reason may nevertheless 
discover that a tendency to produce general happiness is the 
essential characteristic of such actions."* So that even when 

* Ethical Phil. 4 1. 
13 



146 MAN. 

reason has made this discovery, the questions remain, whether 
that moral approbation does not imply a distinct moral qnality 
in actions ? whether virtue may not be useful because it is right, 
instead of being right because it is useful ? whether the rectitude 
of certain principles might not have existed from eternity apart 
from all possibihty of trial by their practical tendencies in cre- 
ated natures ? and whether their utility, subsequent to creation, 
be not either their direct and appropriate result, or else the mark 
which God has been pleased to affix to them in token of His 
divine approval ? These important inquiries the utilitarian doc- 
trine overlooks or negatives, falsely inferring, that because virtue 
conduces to happiness, therefore utility is identical with virtue ; 
whereas, if, as we believe, the principles of rectitude had an 
existence anterior to the present order of things, their condu- 
civeness to happiness is simply the manifestation of their nature 
and tendency. 

32. Eighthly, as the present is a question of fact, we make 
our appeal to consciousness. We affirm, that when we are con- 
scious that an action is morally wrong^ the consciousness is 
neither preceded nor produced by a conviction that the act will 
be followed by disadvantage or loss. When we say, for example, 
that theft is wrong, we mean something more than that it is use- 
less, and this somethiny more is the inherent criminality of the act 
which the mind perceives intuitively. Even Bentham admits 
that " the mind will not be satisfied Avith such phrases as, ' it is 
useless to commit murder,' or, 'it would be useful to prevent it.' " 
And the reason of our dissatisfaction with them, as Dr. Whewell 
remarks, is, " that they do not express our meaning -^ that be- 
sides the calculable injuriousness of theft and murder to society, 
and prior to any such calculation, we instinctively revolt from 
the wickedness of it. And to Paley's objection, that a wild man 
of the woods,. when first caught and brought into civilized society, 
would exhibit no such signs of moral detestation, it is sufficient 
to reply, that neither would he reason, nor intelligibly converse^ 
nor, if brought suddenly from a life of total darkness into the 
presence of the sun, would he be able to see ; yet no one would 
think of denying on this account, either that the faculties of 
reason, speech, and sight, belong to the human constitution, or 
that there are no objective realities answering to them. 

33. We affirm, also, that our moral approbation of an action 
arises previously to any calculation, or even thought, of its 
utility. That virtuous conduct does impart gratification, we 
acknowledge ; for He who made us for virtue, made us for hap- 



PROGRESSION. 147 

piness also. But to say, with the advocates of the selfish system, 
that disinterested virtue is therefore impossible, is, as Butler has 
shown, to be blind to the important fact that self is not the im- 
mediate object of the benevolent affections. If the pleasure of 
benevolence is selfish, because it is felt by self, not only must 
reasoning be selfish, inasmuch as the reasoner is necessarily 
conscious of the process, but, on the same ground, the malevo- 
lent affections also must be selfish. The mistake consists in con- 
founding self, " as it is a subject of feehng and thought, with self 
considered as the object of either." 

We ask, then, with full confidence in the result of our appeal, 
whether, when we describe an action as right, we do not mean 
something more than that it is pleasurable or useful ? Is not 
the pleasure we have in a virtuous act previous to any gratifi- 
cation we may reap from the advantage of it ? Does not this 
very pleasure presuppose an instituted harmony between the 
mind and its object, or the existence of a moral constitution ? 
and are we not conscious that the more ardently we are set 
upon virtue for its own sake, the less we think of its enjoyment, 
and yet the greater our enjoyment is ? May we not derive 
advantage from an act we do not admire, and admire an act 
from which we derive no advantage? Indeed, is not our 
admiration of an act of apparent virtue diminished in the exact 
proportion in which we see cause to suspect that there is a 
selfish end to answer by it ? and hence, is not our admiration 
of an act sometimes changed into detestation, though the ex- 
ternal benefits flowing from it remain the same ? And is it 
not true that moral education attains its highest end in the forma- 
tion of a character capable of the pure, the heroic, and the 
magnanimous, apart from all calculation of consequences ; and 
that all civilized languages contain epithets and phrases ex- 
pressive of disinterestedness and impulsive self-sacrifice ? 

34. Thus, in our subjective inquiry respecting the faculty by 
which we become cognizant of virtue and vice, we have inci- 
dentally brought into view the principal answers to the objective 
question, — What is the ground of virtue ? And we have found 
that each different theory of the foundation of rectitude gives 
us a different doctrine respecting the means by which we are 
supposed to recognize its existence. The remarks which fol- 
low are meant to illustrate, or to harmonize with, the view, that 
the moral quality of actions is taken cognizance of by an origi- 
nal susceptibility or independent faculty of the mind. 

Let it be premised, however, that whether conscience be a 



148 MAN. 

distinct and simple faculty, or be resolvable into simpler and 
anterior faculties of our nature, is of little practical importance. 
All that is necessary to the prosecution of moral science is, the 
evidence that rectitude has an objective existence and character, 
and that man is endowed with the means necessary for placing 
him in harmonious subjective relation to it. Nor let it be sup- 
posed that we regard the mind as a collection of distinct mem- 
bers, or co-existent parts, resembling an organic structure. 
We view it as a substance simple and indivisible. And Ave so 
regard it, not for the supposed simplicity of the view, for we 
profess that we do not see that the subject is simplified by 
exchanging parts for states, but because the contrary is incon- 
ceivable. And the mind, thus simple and indivisible, is capable 
of passing into different states, remembering, hoping, willing, 
approving, being so many distinct acts or states of the whole 
mind. 

35. Among these capabilities, we regard the faculty of recog- 
nizing and responding to the moral quality of actions as a sep- 
arate one. Other faculties are psychologically preliminary to 
it, and its operation may presuppose, or else associate to itself, 
the operation of all the rest ; but this faculty itself we believe 
to be distinct and ultimate. We infer this, first, from an appeal 
to consciousness. On the one hand, there is no positive evi- 
dence to contravene our view ; on the other, the consciousness 
of obligation, and the emotion of approbation or disapprobation 
belonging to the operation of conscience, are so distinct from 
every other perception and affection of which the mind is con- 
scious, as to defy analysis or explanation. Secondly, if, as we 
believe, the moral quality which conscience recognizes be sim- 
ple and ultimate, it may be inferred, by analogy, that the coun- 
terpart faculty is distinct and ultimate also. And, thirdly, if, as 
we shall hereafter see, conscience is a faculty appointed to place 
us in relation to a distinct attribute of the Divine character, and 
to introduce us into a new stage of the Divine manifestation, 
we are furnished with strong presumptive evidence, at least, 
that it is uncompounded and ultimate. 

36. What then is the function of this ultimate power ? Not 
to legislate ; not even to supply information respecting the laws 
of the constitution into which man has come ; but to recognize 
and respond to the rectitude of these laws. To every part of this 
constitution man is so related, that, even apart from conscience, 
his every movement is (not innocent or guilty) but objectively 
right or wrong, accordant or discordant. He could not err re- 



r^ 



PROGRESSION. 149 

specting it, even involuntarily, without disadvantage ; nor culti- 
vate the right state of mind, even though ignorant that it is 
right, without advantage. But the lines of conduct which this 
constitution prescribes, he is competent to learn from his own 
experience of the course of nature, and from the word of God. 
Moreover, he is conscious of motives (I speak not of their ade- 
quacy) to pursue these lines of conduct — the appetites, self- 
love, the benevolent affections, and gratitude and obedience to 
God — motives answering to all the laws .and objects included 
in this constitution. I can conceive, however, of a being capa- 
ble of all this, while yet destitute of what I understand by con- 
science. The constitution into which he has come is an expres- 
sion of the will of God, and as such it prescribes the rules of 
his conduct : and as a creature sentient, intelligent, and emo- 
tional, he may be able to trace them, and may be conscious of 
motives to comply with them. But the will of God itself — 
of what is that an expression but of the immutable rectitude of 
which his Nature is the infinite residence ? Now it appears to 
be the function of conscience to place man in relation to that 
rectitude — to enable him to recognize and respond to the moral 
quality of actions. As the will of God presupposes his holy 
nature of which it is the exponent, the motives which I have 
named presuppose, in every truly virtuous act, that conscious- 
ness of obligation on which virtue rests. As the will of God 
derives its imperativeness from something logically anterior, from 
his intrinsic excellence, so motives derive their highest authority 
from this consciousness of obligation. Every perception of ob- 
ligation, indeed, by acting impulsively on the will, is a motive ; 
but it is something more. Conscience is the ultimate term in 
man's moral nature, answering to the ultimate rectitude of the 
Divine nature. 

37. What is the manner in which conscience operates in re- 
lation to the moral quality of actions ? We think its phenom- 
ena will be found to be threefold.* First, when a man is re- 
flecting on an action which, on some accounts, he hesitates to 
perform, conscience announces its presence by discriminating 
the moral quality of the action. His ground of hesitation to 
perform the act may be the labor, the time, or the self-denial, 
it may require, or its contrariety to the prevaiHng opinion or 
custom. But, fixing its eye on the moral quality of the act, 
conscience regards its rectitude alone, and tells Imn that it is 

* Wayland's Ethics, c. ii. § 2. 

13* 



150 MAN. 

right. Or let us take the instant approbation of which we are 
conscious on witnessing the conduct of a dutiful child. But 
every emotion presupposes an intellectual perception or convic- 
tion as its immediate occasion. This approbation, therefore, 
implies a previous notion or perception ; and as it cannot be 
the perception of the mere external act, it must relate to the 
inherent rightness of the child's conduct. 

38. Secondly, with this discrimination of the moral quality 
of an action is inseparably alUed a constraining or impulsive 
sense of obligation to perform it. This is the to dtov, or the 
sense of that which we ougM to do ; the notion of right involv- 
ing the feeling of duty. I am now speaking of conscience as 
that which has for its proper province our own conduct. But 
it is, I think, equally true of our estimate of the moral conduct 
of others, that our perception of what is right for them to do is 
invariably accompanied by a feeling that they ought to do it ; 
and by a sense of obhgation that, in the same circumstances, we 
should be bound to do it also. And as this sense of obligation 
acts impulsively, we rank it among the motives to action, 
though, unlike other motives, it acts imperatively, by a sense of 
inward constraint. Its motive power is felt when, coming into 
conflict with interest or passion, it bears them down, or is borne 
down by them ; and is implied in the fact that we are consid- 
ered to have sufficiently accounted for a moral act by affirming 
that we felt we ought to perform it. 

39. Thirdly, supposing the action to be performed, there is in- 
separably allied with it a consciousness of self-approhaiion. If 
the action be performed by another, we are conscious of award- 
ing him our esteem, and silently pronounce him deserving of 
reward. On the contrary, if the impulse of conscience be dis- 
obeyed, the sentence of approbation is replaced by one of im- 
plied or of felt condemnation. The remorse, indeed, conse- 
quent on our own moral delinquency, includes elements not to 
be found in the estimate we form of similar delinquency in 
another, but the feeling of revulsion rests, in each instance, on 
essentially the same moral basis. And thus the discrimination 
of that which is right, is allied with the impulsive sense that it 
ought to be done, and this again is rewarded with a conscious- 
ness of pleasure, or punished with a consciousness of pain, 
according as it is done, or left undone. Or, reversing the order, 
it might be said, that a moral sentence presupposes an impulsive 
sense of moral obligation, and this again presupposes the capa- 
city of discriminating right. This view of conscience affirms a 



O 



PROGRESSION. 151 

moral determination, but without rejecting the exercise of the 
judgment respecting the object to which it should be applied ; 
a moral disposition, but without implying that it is imperative in 
the sense of irresistible ; and a moral susceptibility of pleasure 
and pain consequent on the conduct of the will in relation to 
that determination and disposition. 

40. What is the manner in which conscience operates in 
relation to the different classes of the motives ? These we have 
said may be divided into instinctive desires, or such as have 
some outward thing for their object ; self-love, having a man's 
own happiness for its end, and for that purpose postponing and 
even refusing the gratification of the private desires ; the social 
affections ; and regard to the will of God. Now conscience 
itself, we have just remarked, in virtue of its discriminating 
office becomes impulsive. In the very act of saying what is 
right, it commands the performance of the right. Its impulsive 
power, indeed, by no means overbears any of the motives just 
named. It may oppose even the highest — regard to a condi- 
tional command of God — provided the sacrifice be that of a 
duty of mediate to one of 'primary and immediate obligation ; 
and it may unite with a motive of the lowest class — with one 
of the appetites.* In the very act of arbitration, it adds its own 
motive-influence on the will to the influence of the motive which 
it pronounces to be right. 

41. This leads to the inquiry, What is the manner of its 
operation in relation to the will ? We have said that in the 
act of discriminating between right and wrong, it operates im- 
pulsively or with the force of a motive ; and, of course, like 
every other motive, it operates on the wiU. But there is this 
important distinction between conscience, and the various classes 
of desires and affections, that while they do not terminate on the 
will, but require ulterior means for their gratification, the moral 
faculty looks not beyond the will ; finds its end in obtaining the 
consent of the will alone. With those, the consent of the will 
is only the first step to an end ; with this, it is the first and the 
last. It is the first ; for in prohibiting the rising desire of evil 
in the heart, its solemn formula, " thou shalt not," is addressed 
to the wiU : and it is the last ; for even if the prohibited desire 
prevail over the will, and become embodied in outward action, 
conscience takes cognizance of it, and employs its whip of 
scorpions, only as it is a voluntary action. Thus, "nothing 

*S. Mattxii. 4— 8. 



152 ' MAN. 

stands between the moral sentiments and tlieir object. They 
are, as it were, in contact wqth the will. It is this sort of 
mental position, if the expression may be pardoned, that ex- 
plains, or seems to explain, the characteristic properties which 
true philosophers ascribe to them, and which all reflecting 
men feel to belong to them."* Conscience regards the will 
as the prime mover of the man. Until the desires and affec- 
tions have become voluntary dispositions, responsibility, in the 
eye of conscience, does not begin. It stands, if we may say so, 
close to the will, and the objects on which it addresses the will 
are the emotions approaching the will, and those which owe 
their existence to the will. From which it follows that con- 
science itself has nothing in it of moral excellence. It takes 
the name of the moral faculty, not from its excellence, but from 
its office, in having to pronounce on moral qualities. 

42. Can conscience be said to be universal in relation to the 
movements of the mind ? Its contact wdth the will authorizes a 
reply in the affirmative. By contemplating those dispositions 
which depend on the will, its office embraces the whole charac- 
ter and conduct. For what dispositions have not, more or less, 
this character of dependence ? Emotions, indeed, are not vol- 
untary in themselves, but in their proximate cause they are so ; 
for that cause is the object of thought and attention, and over 
the attention the will is invested with a controlling power. So 
that even if the emotion of which the mind is just conscious, 
have not yet obtained the consent of the will, the will is respon- 
sible, in the eye of conscience, either if the emotion has arisen 
in consequence of some former object of attention, or if, now 
that it has arisen in the mind, the will consents to it by not call- 
ing for some object of thought, which, by awakening another 
emotion, would cause this to fade and disappear. The eye of 
conscience, therefore, ranges over all the interior of the charac- 
ter, nor, in the whole of the diversified prospect, does it behold 
anything morally indifferent. Theoretically, it is always "ac- 
cusing, or else excusing." Every thought as it is suggested, 
and every emotion as it is excited, was meant to draw on it the 
judicial eye of conscience. 

43. And, for the same reason, its activity is supposed to be 
unintermitting. Even the operation of human law is seldom 
suspended. It draws a circle around us and our property, 
accompanies us in all our movements on the land, sails with us 

* Ethic Phil. p. 199. 



O 



PROGRESSION. 153 

on the deep, penetrates into all our relations and situations, 
holds us as in the grasp of an invisible hand. But the law of 
conscience is with us, literally, everywhere, and at all times. 
Our sleeping moments are not exempted from its^ jurisdiction, 
for he who sinks into the deepest slumber, sleeps with a purpose 
in his breast. Long time may have elapsed since he first 
formed it, for opportunity may not have served, or the time 
may not have arrived for carrying it into effect. But it was in 
the first moment of its formation that conscience took cognizance 
of it ; and never till it ceases to be a purpose, can conscience 
be said to withdraw its eye from it. Were he to die in sleep, 
that purpose would go with him to the bar of God. Meanwhile, 
though he sleep, his purpose remains in the balances of con- 
science. Never are they laid aside ; and so exquisitely are they 
adjusted, that the "light dust" of other balances is itself weighed 
here. 

44. The view which we have taken of the moral faculty 
enables us to answer another question. What is the authority 
of conscience ? And we find that, besides being, by right, 
universal in its jurisdiction and unintermitting in its activity, 
its authority is supreme. We do not say that its supremacy 
consists in superseding the exercise of the intellectual powers 
in their own legitimate sphere. What that sphere is we have 
seen in the preceding sections on reflection and reason ; from 
which it would appear that they enable us to perceive those 
very relations which involve the obligations recognized by con- 
science. Neither do we say that its supremacy consists in abso- 
lutely dictating the manner in which the obligations resulting 
from our relations should be externally discharged ; this may be, 
and generally is, a subject for reflection. When, therefore, the 
prediction of our Lord, that the time would come when the ene- 
mies of the gospel would think that they did' God service by 
destroying his followers, is quoted to show the fallibility of con- 
science as a guide, its office is misunderstood. Its province, in 
this instance, is, tio recognize the obligation of doing God service, 
and to enforce it as superior to every other obligation. But 
both the perception of the relation to God out of which this obli- 
gation arises, and the manner of discharging it in this particular 
instance, fall within the province of the intellectual powers. 
Nor do we mean that its supremacy consists in superseding 
other motives, but rather in arbitrating between them, denounc- 
ing the wrong, and thus authenticating and corroborating the 
right. In this repect, it not only fills an office vMiich is unique. 



154 MAX. 

but in the occupation of which it sways dejure, an authoritative 
influence over all the other principles of action. 

45. The supremacy of conscience, in the sense explained, may 
be illustrated by the following considerations : 1. That if the 
gratification of a man's appetites comes into collision with the 
dictates of conscience ; and he yields to the solicitations of the 
former, he afterwards feels mortified, and is degraded in his 
own eyes as well as in the eyes of others. If, for so doing, he 
should be designated, as is often the case, a sensuahst, an ani- 
mal, or a beast, the meaning obviously is that he has acted as if 
the higher principle of action had been denied him. It is in vain 
for him to plead the greater strength of the inferior impulse. 
Who thinks of excusing the miser on the ground of the invinci- 
bleness of his habit ? The judgment we form, evidently proceeds 
on the ground that the least whisper of conscience ought to have 
greater authority with us than the strongest impulse of any infe- 
rior principle. 2. That " its title is not impaired by any num- 
ber of defeats." Every defeat " disposes the disinterested and 
dispassionate by-stander to wish that its force were strengthened;" 
and he " rejoices at all accessions to its force." 3. That the 
supremacy of conscience is necessary to the well-being of man. 
Whether we suppose the end for which man is made, to be the 
attainment of the greatest amount of hohness, of happiness, or 
of power — or all combined — either as an individual or as a 
society — it will be found to be gained in proportion to the de- 
gree in which conscience restrains the various classes of motives 
within their appropriate limits. Even the passions themselves 
are gainers by submitting their activity to the regulation of con- 
science. We say nothing of the power which conscience displays 
under particular circumstances — of the unquailing fidelity with 
which it will sometimes take the arrow which was discharged at 
a venture, and compel the sinner to press it into his own breast ; 
of the oracular and prophetic manner in which it menaces him 
on his way to some guilty deed, turning him back, time after 
time, and making him flee at the rustling of a leaf; how, at 
length, when the deed has been perpetrated, it recovers from 
the stunning effects of the blow, in the character of an avenger, 
and refuses again to be silent, clothing every man who looks at 
him with the character of a prophet, who seems to say, " Thou 
art the man !" and inscribing every wall on which his eye may 
rest with a handwriting which tells his doom ; how, when, by a 
course of guilt, it has been gradually drugged to stupefaction, no 
care can prevent it from occasionally starting and glaring with 



O 



PROGRESSION. 1 55 

a look which tells of suspended vengeance ; how it sometimes 
urges the culprit to surrender himself to human law ; pronounc- 
ing its own verdict so quickly as to anticipate all other judg- 
ments, so distinctly as to be heard above the tempest of the 
passions, and so solemnly as to be remembered after every other 
voice is hushed. 

We Avill only advert to what may be regarded as a literary 
illustration of the authority of conscience — the fact that if a 
writer be forcible on any subject it is on this ; and that the most 
vigorous passages and striking imagery of writers sacred and 
profane \^dll be found to relate to subjects which involve the 
office of conscience. Reminding us of the language of Butler 
— itself, indeed, an illustration of our remark — "had it strength 
as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it 
would absolutely govern the world." 

46. The last condition implied in our general proposition is 
that the moral faculty should be of a nature to affect the will 
without compelHng it. That it does not bear down the wiQ, 
but may itself be overborne, we have given many and fearful 
intimations. And some have made this a ground of objection ; 
for if a man chooses to violate it, and to suffer the pain, then, 
says Paley, " the moral instinct has nothing more to offer." 
But to infer that conscience is useless, because it is not irresist- 
ible, or, that there is no conscience, because it is not invincible, 
does not oppress the -vvdll, and make man incapable of virtue, by 
turning him into a machine, is to mistake the nature and office 
of conscience. 

47. True it is, that by leaving man capable of voluntary ac- 
tion, an inlet is left for sin, and that sin, having entered, con- 
science itself has been involved in the perverting effects of the 
fall. But its office is not extinguished, nor has its activity 
ceased : its relative position among the other faculties is what 
it ever was. Its original design and tendency are obvious, 
whatever its subsequent aberrations may have been. As But- 
ler justly remarks, "the body may be impaired by sickness, 
the tree may decay, a machine be out of order, and yet the sys- 
tem and constitution of them not totally dissolved. Every work 
of art is apt to be out of order, but this is so far from being ac- 
cording to its system, that, let the disorder increase, and it will 
totally destroy it. There is plainly something which answers 
to all this in the moral constitution of man." Man, indeed, is 
not only " apt to be out of order," he is out of order. But his 
moral derangement is functional, not organic. And even where, 



156 MAK. 

de facto, his conscience is at present silenced, de jure, it is an 
arbitrator and an oracle still. Every appeal to it from without, 
whether from God or man, presupposes its official existence. 
In the very act of reproaching it, the Scriptures imply its power 
of response. The fact that conscience is, by right, a law uni- 
versally binding, and yet a law capable of being every moment 
violated, is precisely that which renders man capable of moral 
action. 

And thus the conditions of our general proposition are satis- 
fied. Man, introduced into a system of objective moral excel- 
lence, is found capable of a consciousness of obligation in every 
instance in which he has the means of subserving the system. 
He is thus both a manifestation of the Divine character of God; 
and is justly held accountable for voluntarily harmonizing with 
the Divine procedure.* 



Sect. Vlll. — Language and Testimony ; or, a Second 
Human Mind. 

1. If man is, as we have seen, destined to be the inteUigent 
interpreter of the Divine manifestation, and if that manifesta- 
tion is to be unlimited, it may be expected that every variety 
of means will be employed, consistent with other tilings, for in- 
terpreting the manifestation, for the greater this variety, the 
more enlarged will be the view which man will require of the 
Divine perfection displayed. 

If, then, to a single inteUigent human being destined to this 
high end, a second be added — provided each be able to com- 
pare his views with, and add his convictions to, those of the 
other — the means of knowledge possessed by each will be more 
than doubled. Now we have reached that part of the history 
of man in which we have seen a second human being called 
into existence. Here, then, is another intelligent and moral 
being, whose mind, according to its measure of development, 
interprets the visible universe, and holds responsible relations 
with the invisible. May it not be expected, then, that man will 
be endowed with the power of learning more from his intelhgent 
fellow-man than from any other object of external nature ? In 
other words, that a community of knowledge will be possible ? 

2. But how shall this great desideratum be attained ? Two 

* See also Chapters XI. and XII. 



o 



PROGRESSION. 157 

things, at least axe indispensable — that they possess the means 
of interchanging their thoughts and feelings, and that the thoughts 
and feelings imparted carry with them satisfactory evidence of 
their credibihty. 

3. The first condition — the means of interchanging thoughts 
and feelings — the Creator has provided for by the intervention 
of articulate sounds, or speech. But speech, in order that it may 
answer this important end, will be found to include the following 
things : — First, the utterance of sounds. And, in so far, as 
Locke has remarked, the materials of language pre-existed in. 
Nature. 

4. But, secondly, these sounds must be articulate. And this, 
of course, supposes that man possessed, from the first, the fac- 
ulty of speech, or an organization adapted to produce articulate 
sounds. 

5. But, thirdly, if there were nothing more than sounds, even 
articulate sounds, there would still be nothing more than the 
means of signs : the signs themselves would be wanting. Be- 
tween the mere sound and the sign there is a gulf which mind 
alone can span or fill up. The sounds can become signs only 
on this condition, — that the mind supply something to be signi- 
fied, and employ articulate sound, in order to signify it. Birds 
can be taught, remarks Locke, " to make articulate sounds dis- 
tinct enough, which yet by no means are capable of language. 
Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further necessary 
that man should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal 
conceptions, and to make them stand as marks for the ideas in 
liis own mind."* Or, in the language of W. Humboldt,t " the 
intention and the capacity of expressing something thought is 
the only thing which characterizes the articulate sound, and 
which distinguishes it from the animal cry on the one hand, and 
from the musical tone on the other." Thoughts are not the 
creatures of sounds, but articulate sounds presuppose thoughts. 

6. Fourthly, if language is to be an adequate instrument of 
the human mind, its form must correspond with the leading 
powers of the mind, or with the universal laws of thought. 
There are, indeed, numerous vague and general signs in nature, 
expressive of mere feelings, which are older than speech. Such 

* B.III. c. i..§§ 1,2. 

t On the Kawi Language on the Island of Java, etc., Vol. I. p. 83, of 
the Introd. on the Diversity of the Organization of Human Languages, 
Berlin, 1836. 

14 



158 MAN. 

are animal cries and sounds, and such the motions of the body, 
and of every part of the body. But even if man possessed all 
these, and possessed them in peifection, he could do little more 
than express, in a very indefinite manner, some of his sensa- 
tions and desires ; whereas, language, besides expressing all that 
can be indicated by such corporeal signs, must possess, in order 
to be a suitable vehicle for the mind, the peculiar power of con- 
veying from one mind to another, thoughts Avhich have only a 
mental existence, as well as the order of sequence in which they 
stand to each other. Accordingly it is found to answer this end. 
Probably, some of the first sounds which man uttered were de- 
scriptive of sensible objects ; when his Maker called his vocal 
powers into activity, by bringing to him " the living creatures, 
to see what he would call them." Corresponding to other ob- 
jects which are not sensible — ideal objects and invisible reali- 
ties — he has universal terms, and words which have been ap- 
propriated to the special use of the reason by their abstraction 
from all alliance with sensible objects, or by denoting the nega- 
tion of material qualities and sensible objects. But all the ob- 
jects stand in different relations to him and to each other. Ac- 
cordingly, his " language is not a simple collection of isolated 
words ; it is a system of the manifold relations of words to each 
other. These different relations are all referable to invariable 
relations, to universal grammar, which has its necessary laws 
derived from the very nature of the human mind."* Now, 
nouns and verbs, the names of objects, and their diversified re- 
lations to each other and to the human mind, lie at the basis of 
all grammar. Everything to which a name is given is distin- 
guishable by number and gender. By avoiding the repetition 
of the noun substantive in a sentence, the pronoun is given us ; 
by naming the quality or appearance which distinguishes one 
thing from another of a like kind, we have the noun adjective ; 
the degrees of comparison arise from marking the measure of 
intensity belonging to these qualities themselves ; and the prep- 
osition denotes the order and the place of a thing in relation to 
something else. As the action by which a thing is connected 
with ourselves or with other things denoted by the verb, admits 
of modification, it gives rise to the adverb; the ^ew^e denotes the 
time in which the action takes place ; as every action is done or 
suffered, supposes an agent or patient, the distinction is express- 
ed by the active and the passive voice ; while the mode of ex- 

* Cousin's Psychology, c. v. 



r^ 



PROGRESSION. 159 

pressing an action, according as it is, as it may be, must be, and 
might be, as it is wished to be, commanded to be, and ought to 
be, varies according to its relation to the different faculties and 
operations of th« mind. In this simple but mysterious manner, 
speech becomes the exponent of mind, the objective lends itself 
to the subjective, and faithfully expresses its most subtle and 
complicated operations. 

7. But, fifthly, all this only describes the requisites of lan- 
guage for the individual man, or for a solitary man speaking 
" to the air." Whether language is necessary for the individu- 
al mind as a means of thought, we stop not now to inquire : 
that words logically presuppose the thoughts and the classifica- 
tions which they express, is as evident on the one hand, as the 
historical truth on the other, that the mind thinks chiefly 
through the medium of language. In order, however, that 
language may serve as a means of communication, it is evident 
that the mind of each individual must be similarly constituted, 
so that each may be similarly affected by external objects. In 
a former section we showed, that in order that God might im- 
part his mind to the individual man through the mtervention 
of the symbols of external nature, it was obviously necessary 
that each symbol should mean the same for man and for God. 
Equally clear is it that external objects must mean substantially 
the same thing for the two human minds ; for there could not 
otherwise be a common understanding as to the name to be 
given to a thing, and knowledge, as it relates to external nature, 
would be impossible. True it is that the perfection of the ad- 
justment existing between the subjective and the objective in 
the case of each individual, and which we considered in our 
section on Sensational Perception, is so delicate, that no object, 
probably, will ever affect two persons ahke absolutely, and in 
every respect ; probably, even the same individual will never 
derive from the same object two sensations perfectly alike. 
But this inappreciable difference in the impressions make by 
the same objects on two minds will be owing to the very per- 
fection of the adjustment in each case between the world with- 
in and the world without. For as each will view every object 
from a somewhat different point, in a slightly different manner, 
and with an organ or instrument shghtly different from that 
of the other, a corresponding difference in the sensation must 
be the result. But while the very possibiHty of individual 
knowledge impHes, on the one hand, this distinctive perfection 
of sensation for each, the possibility of mutual knowledge, and 



160 - MAN. 

of language as the means of it, takes it for granted, on the 
other, that this difference of sensation is restricted to narrow 
limits, and the actual existence of language demonstrates the 
fact — demonstrates that the necessary mental agreement 
exists. 

8. But, sixthly, besides this similarity in the sensation de- 
rived by each from the objects described, the words employed 
must convey to the hearer the same thoughts and impressions 
as those which prompt the speaker to utter them. For retain- 
ing knowedge, any dots or strokes, or notations, may suffice : 
but for imparting it, the primary condition is, that the signs 
employed be common to speaker and hearer. They are then 
standing in the place of ^^m^s — of things which (it is to be remem- 
bered, as far as external nature is concerned) are themselves 
signs of other things — of God's symbolic language addressed 
to man. For the very same reason, therefore, for which these 
external symbols of the Divine mind must mean the same for 
the two human minds, their verbal signs of that symbolic mean- 
ing must denote the same for each. If, for example, the crea- 
tion of a world is the Maker's mode of saying symbolically to 
a man " I am mighty," that man cannot impart his conviction 
of this truth to a fellow man, unless they have a mutual under- 
standing respecting the meaning of the terms, I, and world, and 
mighty, relative to which the symbolic meaning was conveyed. 
The words of a language, then, must produce in the hearer the 
counterpart of the mental state which leads the speaker to 
utter them. As truth in sentiment is the accordance of our 
conceptions and apprehensions with their objects, so Truth in 
language is the agreement of the words or signs by which we 
express our conception with the conceptions themselves. 

9. And, seventhly, in order that the words of which a lan- 
guage is composed may serve as a means of knowledge, their 
meaning, both separately considered, and in the order of their 
collocation, must be understood to be fixed ; or their meaning 
must not be altered in • any respect, except by mutual under- 
standing. That external nature presents itself to the senses 
with the regularity of law, we have repeatedly shown. And 
in order that this uniformity might be known, equally necessary 
is it (as we have seen in the section on Sensation) that the 
mind should act with corresponding regularity. But if this be 
necessary for the knowledge of the first individual, equally im- 
portant is it for the knowledge of a second that the words in 
which that knowledge is conveyed should maintain a corres- 



r^ 



PROGRESSION. 161 

ponding regularity. An unexpected and unperceived change 
in the symbolic uniformity of nature would not be more detri- 
mental to the knowledge of the first than an unperceived 
change in the verbal uniformity of language would be to the 
knowledge of the second. The only way in which the evil 
attending the change could be obviated would be, by effecting 
it by a mutual understanding. Only let this condition be com- 
plied with, and kept in mind, and the parties might safely, as 
far as their knowledge of each other's meaning is concerned, 
" call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet." 

10. This representation aw^akens an inquiry, which leads to 
the second part of the section, on the Credibility of Testimony. 
For suppose that one party should report of a thing that it is 
bitter when it is sweet, without warning tie other of the changed 
meaning he wished him to attach to the term ; or suppose he 
should affirm that he had seen or heard that which he had not, 
here would be a violation of verbal or conventional truth, which, 
unless the evil can be adequately guarded against, may be re- 
peated until language, so far from increasing the knowledge of 
one, by adding to it the knowledge of another, may only serve 
to cast discredit on every means of knowledge. In order, then, 
that language or testimony may be a means of knowledge, in a 
world in which falsehood is possible, two things, at least, are 
indispensable ; — the credibility of the testimony must be ascer- 
tainable, and, being ascertained, the mind must be so constituted 
as to beUeve it. 

11. A brief analysis of this subject presents us with the fol- 
lowing particulars : — First, that our belief in testimony is to be 
resolved ultimately into that law of the mind which affirms that 
every phenomenon must have a cause. To resolve it, as is 
generally done, into our faith in the unfaihng constancy of na- 
ture, is to stop short of an ultimate fact ; for our faith in this 
very constancy is itself resolvable into the pjior principle, that 
every event must have a cause. This prior principle, however, 
admits of no simphfication, no analysis ; it is ultimate. 

12. Secondly, that flowing from this as an irresistible but 
secondary belief is the conviction, that the same cause will uni- 
formly produce the same effect. But if this act of the mind be 
the natural result of the prior act, the truth of its information is 
equally to be reUed on with the information of that act ; and 
just because that prior behef is to be relied on, inasmuch as the 
operations of nature are uniform. 

13. Thirdly, that as man becomes acquainted with this uni- 

14* 



162 MAN. 

formity of operation, primarily, through the medium of the 
senses, it follows that the senses themselves are governed by 
laws which are uniform in their operation. How, otherwise, 
could we know anything of the uniformity of nature ? And the 
reasonableness of this proposition is obvious ; for as the opera- 
tions of nature, taken as a whole, are uniform, and as the senses 
themselves are parts of that w^hole, the regularity of the whole 
presupposes a corresponding regularity in all its parts, and, 
therefore, in the evidence of the senses. 

14. Fourthly, that if the uniformity of operation in the ex- 
ternal world presupposes a corresponding regularity in the laws 
which determine the evidence of the senses, this regularity 
again equally presupposes a corresponding uniformity in the 
testimony of those who report it ; otherwise the experience of 
each would exist in vain for all the rest, and the unioYi and 
progress of mankind would be impossible. Now that this par- 
ticular kind of testimony exists is evident, since it is from tes- 
timony, chiefly, that we derive our proof of the constancy of 
nature. In other words, there is an evidence of the senses as 
unvarying as the course of nature itself; and there is an evi- 
dence of testimony as unvarying as that of the senses ; and the 
unvarying character of both of these classes of evidence is to 
be accounted for in the same simple way — that they form a 
part of the unvarying constitution of nature itself, and are sim- 
ply the expression of its l^ws ; so that if their certainty were 
to fail, the failure would impeach nature itself of uncertainty 
and caprice. 

15. Fifthly, that this evidence of the truth of testimony is 
ascertainable ; for, if the uniformity of the external world pre- 
supposes a corresponding regularity in the e\ddence of the 
senses, and if their regularity equally presupposes a similar 
fidehty in the testimony of those who report it, this thi'eefold 
regularity again equally presupposes, or rather presupposes 
with a threefold ground of certainty, that this testimony is dis- 
tinguished by characteristics which make it certainly ascertain- 
able ; otherwise, the laws which determine the constancy of the 
external world, of the evidence of the senses, and of testimony, 
would all exist in vain. But the marks of credible testimony 
are as certain as the laws of nature, simply because they are 
the expressions of some of these very laws. 

16. Sixthly, that this evidence of credible testimony is capa- 
ble of increase to any amount. The admission that there is a 
kind of testimony worthy of some degree of credit, involves the 



O 



PROGRESSION. 163 

consequence that that kind of testimony, multiplied indefinitely, 
would command the highest degi-ee of belief of anything to 
which it might testify. Hume himself, indeed, admits, that 
some kinds of probable evidence are as convincing as demon- 
stration. 

17. And, seventhly, that the mind is constituted to believe 
the evidence of certain kinds of testimony. This appears from 
the fact that the evidence in question is denominated credible ; 
and that it is to the spontaneous belief of it, chiefly, that we are 
indebted for our knowledge of the uniform operations of nature, 
as well as for our power of conducting the affairs of social and 
civil life. From all which it follows, first, that this evidence of 
testimony is calculated to produce belief, just because the laws 
of nature are constant in their operation ; and, secondly, that 
not to believe such evidence would be, not only to believe some- 
thing else, and to beheve it without evidence, but contrary to all 
evidence. 

18. But what was the origin of language ? and what the 
primitive language of mankind ? 

Respecting the first question, it might be premised that if a 
person, not acquainted with the history of the subject, were to 
tax his ingenuity to the utmost in imagming all the possible 
modes of accounting for the origin of language — not shrink- 
ing from the most extravagant and absurd his fancy could de- 
vise — the diversified, baseless, and absurd theories which have 
been gravely propounded by learning and philosophy, would 
yet eclipse his wildest conjectures. Lord Monboddo, Volney, 
Maupertuis, and others, represent man as originally without 
speech — a mere " mutum ac turpe pecus " — beginning with 
the inarticulate cries " by which animals call upon one another ; '* 
the last-named writer supposing that when separate dialects 
were formed, a language was coustnicted "by a session of 
learned societies convened for the purpose." Dr. A. Smith 
supposes that the invention of language began with substan- 
tives ; Herder is in favor of interjections ; Dr. Murray makes 
the syllable Ag the foundation of, at least, the Indo-European 
tongues ; while Rousseau proposes the problem, " Whether a 
society already formed was more necessary for the institution 
of language, or a language already invented for the establish- 
ment of society ? " 

19. That man had originally to acquire even the capacity for 
speech — this is the first or lowest notion respecting the origin 
of language. It wiE, however, be time enough to point out the 



IM MAN> 

inconsiderate folly of tliis view when anything rational has 
been advanced in its behalf. 

20. That man was primarily endowed with the organic ca- 
pacity for speech, though not to any degree with the actual 
knowledge of language — this may be regarded as the second 
hypothesis on the subject. " Speech," says Humboldt, " accord- 
ing to my fullest conviction, must reaUy be considered as in- 
herent in man ; since, as the work of his intellect in its simple 
knowledge, it is absolutely inexplicable. This hypothesis is 
faciUtated by supposing thousands and thousands of years; 
language could not have been mvented without its type pre- 
existing in man." Still, he considers language as evolved en- 
tirely from himself. Now to this idea of the absolute origina- 
tion of language by a being merely preconfigured to employ it, 
it is obvious to object, first, that if mankind had not been pre- 
viously endowed with " a natural language, they could never 
have invented an artificial one by their reason and ingenuity." * 
Secondly, that no tribe has ev€r been known to emerge from 
barbarism, except by civilizing influences from without. And, 
thirdly, that the uniform tendency of an unciviHzed tribe, 
left to itself, is to sink lower in the scale of brutish degrada- 
tion. 

21. That man was originally endowed, not merely with the 
capacity for speech, but, to a certain extent, with the actual 
and intelligent use of language — this is the third theory, and 
most in harmony with the reason of the case, and with the brief 
intimations of Scripture on the subject. If to this view it be 
objected, that " the history of many languages shows a gTadual 
progress from small beginnings to a more perfect state," we 
reply that this is perfectly compatible (admitting it to be true) 
with the idea that a scanty language was bestowed on man in 
the first stage of his existence. If it be further objected, that 
" the radical words of a language are clearly referable to the 
source whence our first ideas are derived — namely, natural and 
external objects," we reply that this also is quite compatible 
with the theory that a certain amount of language was originally 
taught by God ; for it is to be supposed that it would be all 
derived from obvious sources, and be employed analogically. 
If it should still be urged, that the communication of a mature 
power, such as that which the theory supposes, is quite incon- 
ceivable, we reply that the creation of a man with immature 

* Beid's Inquiry, &c., c. iv., § 2. 



o 



PROGRESSIOK. 165 

powers is not more conceivable. The great miracle is the cre- 
ation of man at all. That admitted, the admission that he was 
literally endowed with the power of speaking from the first, 
appears to be as natural as that he could Hterally walk. It by 
no means follows that his language at first was copious. The 
probability is that the words Divinely taught were those only 
which denoted the objects most important for man to know, 
tx)gether with his most urgent wants, and with certain leading 
ideas and emotions. From these, as from, a prolific root, the 
tree of language gradually developed and branched off in every 
direction, according to the laws of the human mind. 

22. Li strict accordance with this view, almost every new 
explorer in comparative language returns with some additional 
proof of the original unity of language, whereas, had it been 
left absolutely to man's origination, the probability is that 
almost every family would have had its own language. Fur- 
ther, the fact that man had a real and adequate language im- 
mediately after his creation seems to be implied and com- 
memorated in the existence of a dual number in some of the 
earliest tongues. A single human pair would have occasion for 
a form of expression denoting duality ; whereas, when society 
became complex, such a form would be likely to be superseded 
by the plural numbers; and accordingly it had disappeared 
even so early as the Latin language. But, chiefly, in authenti- 
cation of this view, the Biblical account represents the first 
man as actually using language immediately on his creation ; 
not only giving names to objects, but in the instance of Eve, 
assigning reasons for the names given, in calling her, firsl^ 
woman, and afterwards Eve, reasons having no connection what- 
ever with the sounds of the words or with any sounds in na- 
ture. 

23. Our second question relates to the particular language 
originally spoken by man. Up to the close of the last century, 
philologers were occupied, chiefly, in aiming to determine the 
relative antiquity of languages, and in a fruitless search after 
the primeval tongue. The low Dutch, the Chinese, the Celtic, 
and the Biscayan, have each found learned advocates claiming 
for it the honor of having been the language spoken in Para- 
dise. And even when the suffrages of the learned determined 
in favor of a Semitic language, the Abyssinian and the Syrian 
disputed the honor with the Hebrew. The most probable con- 
clusion is that the primary language was one from which the 
Semitic or Syro- Arabian family of languages has sprung ; and 



166 MAN. 

one, therefore, not now actually in existence, except as vari- 
ously represented by the dijfferent members of this family. It 
is by no means unlikely that the Hebrew retains many of the 
identical vocables uttered by the first man, especially of the 
names of objects. Beyond this, all is conjecture ; and even in 
this respect, the Hebrew cannot be supposed to enjoy a mo- 
nopoly of the distinction. 

24. " So God created man in his own image ; in the image 
of God created He him, male and female created He them," — 
And such was the mysterious and manifold constitution of the 
being to whom and by whom the perfections of the Deity were 
to be set forth. Some, indeed, have spoken of his knovrledge, 
holiness, and actual powers, while in Eden, in terms of eulogy 
appropriate only to " the second Adam, the Lord from heaven." 
But to claim for new-made man a kind and degree of excel- 
lence which would have almost made progress impossible by 
placing him already at the goal,* is to err as egregiously in one 
extreme, as they err on the other, who represent barbarism as 
man's original state, or even a state of mere animal sensibihty. 
The view which we are able to take of man's constitution at 
this distance of time from his creation, and which we have 
endeavored to give, is the result of ages of development. How 
much more rapidly the process of development would have 
proceeded in the hypothetical case of his having remained un- 
fallen, we can only conjecture. That the first man only be- 
came gradually conscious of his capabihties, that he only 
potentially answered to the description given in the sections of 
this chapter, must, I think, be admitted by every one who duly 
considers the subject. Like the language of which we believe 
him to have been made the recipient — rudimental and sugges- 
tive — his early consciousness disclosed only so much of his 
intellectual and moral capabihties as was necessary to qiiicken 
his activity, and to justify the responsibility of his new and 
grave position. 

Sect. IX. — Man's Primitive Condition. 

From man's constitution, we pass to a survey of his primi- 
tive condition. His nature, we have seen, was a sublime novelty 
in creation. Did his circumstances exhibit corresponding pro- 

* As Dr. South does, for example, in the beautiful and oft-quoted, but 
purely imaginary passage on this subject, in his Sermon on Man created 
in the image of God. 



PROGRESglON. 167 

gression ? The great miracle of the introduction of such a 
subject prepares us to expect that all the objective arrange- 
ments necessary for his development and well-being will be 
found to await and to attend him. 

1. Here, our attention is due, first, to the selected and pre- 
pared abode which awaited man. "And Jehovah Elohim planted 
a garden in Eden, on the East, and placed there the man whom 
he had formed. And Jehovah Elohim caused to grow out of 
the gound there every tree pleasant to the" sight and good for 

eating And Jehovah Elohim took the man, and placed 

him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate it and to keep it 

And Jehovah Elohim formed out of the ground every beast of 
the field and every fowl of the heaven ; and He brought [each] 
unto the man to see what he would call it, and whatever the 

man called any living creature, that was its name Elohim 

blessed them, and Elohim said, ' Be fruitful, and multiply, and 
replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the 
fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every 
living creature that moveth upon the earth.' " * But were any 
of these species now absolutely originated for the first time "^ or 
were they all reproductions of pre-existing species ? or, were 
some of them reproductions, and the remainder newly originated 
species ? It will never be possible, perhaps, to return categori- 
cal answers to these inquiries. The probability is that most of 
the species useful to man co-existed at a period antecedent to 
his creation, with mammalia long ago extinct.t But man's true 
distinction, and his well-being, depended not on the Divine crear 
tion of new species immediately prior to his appearance. The 
tribes of animal and vegetable lite which actually subserve his 
interests, were not the less designed to do him service because 
the primary origination of many of them may have preceded 
his own by an unmeasured period ; rather, that period implied 
the importance of the being whose coming was so long antici- 
pated. 

2. That which truly marks the progress of the great scheme, 
is the special provision made by the Divine Creator for the 
security, instruction, and well-being of the new-made man. 
According to the inspired record just quoted, pre-existing 
nature was now raised to new relations, and was promoted to 
offices unknown before. As if Eden itself were not sufficiently 

* Gen. ii. 8, 9, 15, 19; i. 28. 

t Owen's Reports to Brit. Assoc. 1842, 1843 ; and Introd. to Brit. Foss. 
Mamm. p. 31. 



168 MAN. 

paradisiacal, a particular part of it was selected, and especially 
prepared for man's reception. Here, that lie might neither 
starve through hesitation respecting what he might safely 
partake, nor perish through makmg a wrong selection, he was 
surrounded by such fruit-bearing trees as were both grateful 
to the senses and good for food. His muscular and mental 
system required activity ; and, that he might not expend it in 
vain, he is shown how the ground invites, and will repay, his 
easy cultivation, developing new properties at his touch ; each 
flower owning his care by an added perfume, and each fruit by 
assuming a richer bloom and a more exquisite flavor. He is 
endowed with powers of observation and reflection ; and the 
animals* are brought into his presence to disclose their charac- 
teristics under his eye, and to receive appropriate names from 
his lips. To awaken him to a consciousness of his supremacy, 
he is apprized that aU the creatures are subject to his will. 
The whole was arranged to disclose him to himself. Nature 
was moved at his coming ; and so moved as to reveal to him 
his power, by its own ready subordination to his wiU; his 
aptitude for knowledge, by giving up its secrets to his obser- 
vation ; and his capacity for enjoyment, by reflecting his own 
looks of gladness. 

3. But all this supposes, secondly, the presence and the ac- 
tual superintendence of a Divine instructor. To assume either 
that man was not originally an immediate creation of God, or 
that, having been created, he was then abandoned by his Maker 
to his own unaided efforts, involves a compHcation of extrava- 
gances which only the enormous credulity of scepticism could 
entertain. Even if geology suppHed no evidence of man's 
recent introduction on the earth — if history afforded no proof 
that man has never been known to emerge from bai'barism, 
except by aid from withoutf — if astronomy had never asked for 
a primary impulse, in order to account for the motions of the 

* Such, probably, as were suited for domestication ; just as the trees of 
the garden were such as were pleasant to the eye and good for food. 
There is no reason for supposing that any of the camivora were present. 

t " The most conclusive argument against the original civilization of 
mankind," says the author of the Vestiges, " is to be found in the fact that 
we do not now see civilization existing anywhere except in certain con- 
ditions altogether different from any we can suppose to have existed at 
the commencement of our race." But, first, do we find civilization inva- 
riably resulting from these said conditions ? For, if not, something more 
than these conditions is necessary to account for it. And, secondly, as 
the continuance of the race is a process requiring peculiar conditions, 



O 



PROGRESSION. 169 

solar system, the reason of the case would yet have required 
the hypothesis, that, whenever man commenced his career, the 
hand that formed him was not withdrawn till his faculties had 
received an impulse in the nght direction. Hence, Herder scouts 
the idea of " every wretched wanderer having in some way, 
discovered his system of worship as a kind of natural theology," 
and " places at the head of all history an original and higher 
state of cultivation in man, proceeding from God." The 
" customary plan of beginning the history of religion, or of 
society, with the savage state," is equally rejected by Cousin* 
as unphilosophical. " Does it not seem," asks J. von MijUer, 
" as though the breath of Divinity dwelling in us, our spirit had 
acquired, through the immediate teaching of a higher being, 
and for a long time retained, certain indispensable ideas and 
habits, to which it could not easily have attained of itself?" 
F. Schlegel, too, " strikingly shows the necessity of admitting 
the original teaching of the human race by the spirit of God." 
" The original state of man," says the distinguished antiquary, 
Ouverof, " is neither the savage state, nor a state of corruptness, 
but a simple and better state approaching nearer to the Divinity." 
And the universal tradition of the ancient world (accepted by 
Plato) told of man's divine education at the commencement of 
his earthly course. 

4. This plain dictate of reason the Bible satisfies. " Who 
then educated the first human pair ?" asks the elder Fichte, in 
a burst of common sense too strong for the bonds of an infidel 
philosophy. " A spirit bestowed its care upon them, as is laid 
down in an ancient and venerable original record, which, taken 
altogether, contains the profoundest and the loftiest wisdom, 
and presents those results to which all philosophy must at last 
retum."t To object that such Divine tuition is entirely unknown, 
at present, to the course of nature, is to forget that man is no 
longer produced by miracle ; and that a first man is possible 

might not " the commencement of the race " have required conditions 
peculiar also — conditions which have never since been supplied because 
never since necessary ? If, to use his own language, " man started at 
first with this peculiar organization [of speech] ready for use," it is pre- 
suming but little if we suppose that certain words were supplied to this 
unique organization. The grand instrument having been bestowed, a 
lesson on its use, and compass, and power, seems only appropriate. 

* Introduction to Hist, of Phil,, Lect. 2. For the other authorities re- 
ferred to, see Prof Tholuck, Bib. Cabinet, Vol. XXVIII. Appendix. 

t Quoted by Dr. J. P. Smith in Bib. Cyclo. Art. Adam. 
15 



170 MAN. 

but once. To dispute respecting the particular mode in which 
the tuition in question was imparted and made available, is only 
a contention about words. All that we seek is an escape from 
the revolting contradiction of supposing that man was created 
and left a semi-brute ; that with fewer and feebler instincts than 
other animals, he should also have been left without instruction ; 
that he, the heir of the world, should have been left unapprized 
of, and unqualified for, his inheritance ; that a constant miracle 
for his protection and support should have been made necessary, 
in order to avoid the transient one of his primary instruction. 
And the Bible, we repeat, meets this demand of our reason. It 
affirms, in effect, that man's first exercises were those of a man, 
and not of a child. By the Creator's wisdom, a circle of se- 
lected objects is prepared, and man is no sooner transferred 
into the centre than his senses and faculties are put into adult 
activity, each responding to its appropriate object. The vol- 
ume of creation is now first opened at a chosen page to man's 
intelligent eye, and the Divine author . himself condescends to 
interpret for him some of its earliest lessons. 

5. Thirdly, besides the collection of assorted objects into the 
midst of which man was introduced, another being, constituted 
like himself, was brought near to him, and placed, by the mys- 
terious medium of speech, in the most intimate communication 
with him. When the Hving creatures were brought into the 
presence of Adam, how little would he have found in them all 
with which it would have been desirable for him to sympathize, 
even had he been enabled to interpret all their sounds, and to 
understand all their unsignified sensations and instincts ! How 
much was there in him — all the nobler parts of his nature — 
Adth which there Avas nothing whatever in them to correspond ! 
So far was he in advance of all pre-existing natures, that crea- 
tion contained for liim " no help-meet." " And Jehovah God 
said. It is not good for man to be alone, I will make for him a 
help suitable for him."* And in the production of a second 
human being, an addition was made to man's means of im- 
provement, greater, in some respects, than as if the number 
of his own senses and faculties had been doubled. For even 
if increase of knowledge had been the only end to be answered 
by the arrangement, by placing those added organs and powers 
as a distinct and independent means of knowledge, at the dis- 
posal cxf a second human being, the two can be in different places 

* Gen. ii. 18, 20. 



O 



PROGHESSION. 171 

at the same moment, and be employed in a different manner, 
and yet each can enjoy the acquisitions of the other. Each 
can leai-n more from the other than from all creation besides ; 
for not only is the mind of one a compendium of creation for 
the other — a speculum in which that outer world is reflected 
for him — in the constitution and operations of that mind itself 
an object of contemplation is prepared for him, richer in the 
materials of thought than all the physical universe. Each can 
learn more from the other than as if a second world had been 
created instead, and had been brought within the reach of his 
senses. 

In the case of the first mind, the truth of its impressions from 
without depended on the continued perfection of the adjustment 
existing between the subjective and the objective. But in the 
event of that adjustment being in any respect disturbed, what 
standard had the man by which to test the truth of his impres- 
sions ? The addition of a second mind tended to supply the 
want. Every look was symbolic. Every tone touched a hid- 
den sympathy. Every word was calculated to be a preservative 
from error, a corroboration of knowledge, or an incitement to 
the attainment of further knowledge. The advent of a fellow- 
mind lifted man consciously above the level of mere nature, and 
was the true signal for the subjection of nature. It was the 
preternatural, preparing him more effectually for communion 
with the supernatural. It was at once the sign of progress, and 
the means of advancement for all the future. 

6. Now also, fourthly, the institution of the sabbath awaited 
man. For " God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, 
because thereon he rested from all his work which God had 
created and made." This is the historical record of the act of 
institution. By some, indeed, it is contended that the sabbath 
was first given to the Israelites in the Avilderness ; because no 
mention is made of it in the histories of the patriarchs.* But 
to this it may be replied, first, that the objection rests only on 
negative evidence ; that the writings referred to are not a his- 
tory, but brief, fragmentary records, embracing twenty-five cen- 
turies in a few chapters ; and that similar omissions can be 
pointed out in subsequent parts of Scripture-history from which 
yet no one thinks of drawing a similar inference. For example, 

=* So Paley in his Mor. Phil., chap, on the Sabbath. For a full exposi- 
tion of the arguments on both sides, see Bcenius. Diss, de Instt., etc. Mo- 
saicae Legis, § xi. 



172 MAN. 

in the account of the four or five hunched years from Joshua to 
David there is not the remotest allusion to the sabbath ; no 
mention is made from the birth of Seth till the flood (a period 
of, at least, fifteen hundred years) of sacrifice ; and during the 
eight hundred years from Joshua to Jeremiah, the rite of cir- 
cumcision is not named. But, secondly, we deny the truth of 
the statement itself. The division of time into weeks is re- 
ferred to repeatedly during the period in question ;* and what 
is remarkable, although it is not a natural division, Hke that of 
day and night, made by the revolution of the earth on its axis ; 
or of the year and its seasons, made by the revolution of the 
earth round the sun ; or of the month, occasioned by the revo- 
lution of the moon ; yet nations the most dissimilar and remote 
are found to have observed it from the eai'Hest antiquity — a 
fact which can be explained only on the supposition of some 
weekly institution coeval with our race. Thirdly, that the 
sabbath was not instituted, but only restored, in the wilderness, 
appears from the fact, that even prior to the promulgation of 
the law on Sinai, the people spontaneously gathered a double 
quantity of manna on the sixth day ; that Moses notices the 
sabbath on that occasion only incidentally, rendering no ex- 
planation of its nature, and no reason for its observance, as if 
both were too well known to make it necessary. Fourthly, the 
consecration of the sabbath was enjoined on Sinai in connection 
with laws all of which were as old as human nature ; leaving it 
to be inferred that the law of the sabbath was of equal antiquity. 
A fifth reason, of pecuhar cogency to an unbiassed mind, is de- 
rivable from the fact that the law of the sabbath occurs first in 
the history of the Adamic creation. The only natural inference 
is that it was mstituted at that time. And then, sixthly, the 
reason assigned for the sabbath — the completion of creation — 
began to be in force at the period of that completion, and not 
two or three thousand years afterwards ;t nor was the fact which 
this first-born of ordinances commemorated interesting to the 
Jew only, but to man ; nor were the advantages which it pro- 
posed to secure needed by the Jew only ; the race requu-ed 
them. " The sabbath was made for man," said the Lord of the 

■* Gen. vii. 4—10; A-iii. 10—12; xxix. 27, 28; 1. 10. Job ii. 13. Ex. 
vii. 25. 

t " And what sense were it to read the command thus : ' For m six 
days the Lord made heaven and earth, &c., and rested the seventh : there- 
fore, two thousand five hundred and thirteen years after, he blessed the 
seventh day and hallowed it.' " — Lightfoot's Works, vol. vii. p. 385. 



o 



PROGRESSION. 173 

sabbath ; implying that the making of the sabbath was coeval 
with man's creation. 

On these grounds we believe in a primeval sabbath. He 
who had made man's complex constitution, knew that a sabbath 
was one of the necessities of his nature. He who had prepared 
for him the solace of a fellow mind ; and who even admitted 
him to the hallowing influence of communion with Himself, 
knew that, by a law of his own implanting in human nature, 
that communion would become more assimilating by recurring 
at stated intervals, and therefore He appointed a stated season 
of special intercourse. Man is made for great occasions, and 
must have them in prospect ; and therefore, in addition to his 
daily worship, the sabbath promised him the return of peculiar 
joy. Probably, too, a place was set apart for the Divine man- 
ifestation — the shadow of the tree of life — or a spot where the 
symbolic glory abode, which afterwards lingered at the gate of 
Eden, and reappeared in the Jewish temple. Here, while cre- 
ation lay around him still wet with its first dews, man was to 
come and minister as its high priest, offering up the incense of 
a grateful heart in the presence of Creating sovereign goodness. 

7. A fifth element of man's condition was the enactment of a 
special law. This, too, was a novelty in creation. Natural law 
indeed was ubiquitous, penetrating and containing all things. 
And man, as far as he belonged to mere nature, took these laws 
into his own constitution, and became subject to them- But 
there is a part in him above nature ; and, accordingly, a law 
unkno^vn to pre-existing nature, addresses him. " And Jeho- 
vah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the 
garden eating, thou mayest eat : but of the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that 
thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die." * No sooner is man 
endowed with the elements of responsibiUty than the hand of 
Law receives him, and claims him for a subject. In the same 
moment in which his faculties begin to act, the Law, already- 
present and imperative, prescribes the direction of their activity. 
The Creator becomes the Governor, and the creature rises into 
the subject. 

8. (1.) With the vindication of this law, or with its actual 
violation, we have not now to do-t Our present concern is 
only with the truths which it presupposed and taught. Possibly, 
the prohibited tree belonged to a species not yet extinct. Nor 

* Gen. ii. 16, 17. t On these subjects, see Chaps. XVin. and XIX. 
15* 



174 MAN. 

is it improbable that it was a tree having exciting and noxious 
properties ; so that its interdiction may have been wise and 
beneficent. But these are points of mere curiosity and conject- 
ure. The first great truth which it forcibly recalled and em- 
bodied was that God was the Creator of all ; for the absolute 
authority which the command assumes, is the right of the Cre- 
ator alone. The new-made man, indeed, could not have been 
in danger of formally denying this truth. It must have been 
one of the first thoughts to Avhich his consciousness awoke. 
The very name of God implied it. Man's danger lay in famil- 
liarly admitting the fact without feeling its force. He knew of 
no other mode of production than that of direct Divine origina- 
tion. To him, therefore, production by creation was the natural 
mode. Hence, the importance of making him feel that he had 
been really and truly originated ; that he owed his being to mir- 
acle. One of the Divine designs in creating the woman after 
the man, and virtually in his presence, was, probably, to vivify 
this idea of his own creation. And now, the command, in 
effect, repeats it and perpetuates it. " I am the Lord thy God 
that created thee ; and have therefore an absolute right in thee ;" 
this was the solemn preamble and formula of the law, not form- 
ally announced, perhaps, but spontaneously supplied by the 
human heart. 

9. (2.) The next great truth which the law disclosed was the 
eocistence of moral government. The language of the Law- 
giver was, in effect, " I have made thee consciously capable of 
self-government, and therefore of my government. Thy nature 
is a reflection of mine own, and can advance and be happy only 
by remaining in harmony with it. Awake to a sense of thy 
dignity and responsibility." The command touched a new part 
of man's constitution. The sentient, percipient, reflective, 
rational, and emotional parts of man's nature had already 
responded to their appropriate objects — objects supplied 
by Power and Wisdom and Goodness, and declarative of these 
attributes. But now Holiness speaks, and awakes up the will 
and the conscience to a perception of their high functions. 
Taking its mandate into the very sanctuary of man's nature, it 
disclosed to hun the great fact of his moral power. It told 
him, in effect, that the will of God was everywhere ; and that 
if he chose, he might find Thou shalt and Thou shalt not in- 
scribed on everything. So that, in that command, all nature 
may be said to have found a voice, and to have republished its 
ancient laws ; each created object to have lifted up its head and 



O 



PROGRESSION. 175 

to have caught a beam from the Divine sanctity. Having led 
man to a throne wliich overlooked and commanded all earthly 
things, the Divine Governor now unveiled his own throne, and, 
lo, man was sitting on its footstool ! 

10. (3.) But law implies sanctions. Now, the very fact that 
man is threatened with death in the event of his disobedience 
implies that he is made for uninterrupted life. For to suppose 
that he is not, is to suppose that his life will terminate at some 
time even though he continue to obey ; in other words, that his 
happy existence will terminate whether he obey or disobey. 

If the Divine manifestation is to be continued in a course of 
unending progression, and if man is the being, or one of the 
orders of being, by whom the manifestation is to be continued, 
and to whom it is to be made, a twofold reason flows from the 
twofold office which he thus sustains, for the expectation of his 
unending existence. One of these reasons is objective and the 
other subjective ; and under one or the other of these will be 
found included all that has ever been advanced by the advo- 
cates of man's immortahty. 

11. The objectve reason is derived from the assumption that 
man is the being to whom the Divine manifestation is to be 
made. For, if such be the fact, the duration of his existence 
must be co-extensive with the duration of the manifestation ; 
and as that is never to end, it follows that man must have been 
destined for immortality. For the same reason that he has 
being at all, that being will be continued to him for ever. This 
conclusion, however, assumes that man continues capable of 
appreciating the Divine display : in the event of his losing that 
capacity, it may be thought to leave us in doubt respecting the 
issue. 

12. Let us, then, look next to the subjective reasons for man's 
immortality, or to those derivable from his constitution as view- 
ed in the light of Divine government. The manifestation is 
continuous ; and he possesses the power of recalling and re- 
taining the past, and of carrying it on in an unbroken chain 
into the future. The manifestation is accumulative and pro- 
gressive ; and though his capacity, intellectual and moral, is to 
be ever filling, the same activity which tends to fill it, tends 
also to enlarge it for all the future. To the question then, 
might not the great end have been answered by making man 
immortal as a race, though perishable as an individual ? the 
reply is obvious. The highest end of man's existence is not 
intellectual but moral ; in other words, the manifestation is to 



176 MAN. 

be made by him as well as to him. Every present hour finds 
and leaves him, by supposition, not less, but more prepared by 
the influence of th« past for every future hour. The more he 
sympathizes with the laws of the Divine government, the great- 
er his power of obedience becomes. And the more he exhibits 
of the Divine character, the more he becomes capable of ex- 
hibiting it. So that if these capacities and powers constitute a 
reason for his having been brought into existence, the reason 
grows stronger every moment for its indefinite prolongation. 
At no moment could the termination of his existence arrive 
without finding him in the midst of unterminated questions, in- 
cipient attainments, with hopes and expectations projected far 
into the future, and with powers and capacities for taking pos- 
session of it such as he was never conscious of before. 

Now when it is remembered that for every appetite, organ, 
and faculty, whether in man or in the inferior animal, there is 
found to be a corresponding object in external nature, the pre- 
sumption is suggested that man's noblest aspiration cannot have 
been enkindled to be extinguished in disappointment. But be- 
sides that the eye finds hght ; and the ear, sounds ; the intellect, 
objects of knowledge ; and the affections, objects of love ; it is 
to be remarked that many parts of the human constitution exist 
latently and potentially long before they announce themselves 
by coming forth to seek their appropriate objects. Like the 
lungs of the foetus in the womb,* they are of no immediate use, 
but form a part of a prospective arrangement, and point to a 
destination not yet come ; affording analogical ground for the 
conclusion that man's subjective fitness for immortality, and his 
ardent longing after it, will be met by a corresponding arrange- 
ment in the future to which they point ; that a sphere is assign- 
ed him in which his powers can expand amidst congenial objects 
without end. 

13. And so" also in the event of man's disobedience ; as the 
loss of his hohness does not involve the loss of any of the con- 
stituent parts of his being, that being itself could not be extin- 
guished except by a mechanical act of omnipotence — an act 
having no congenial relation to a moral being, and an act imply- 
ing that an obstacle had at length arisen in the part of the Di- 
vine proceedure which could not be turned to the account of any 
further manifestaton, and that therefore it must be annihilated. 
This surely, would be the weakness of justice, not its sti'ength. 

* See Butler's Analogy, p. i. c. 1, 



PROGRESSION. 177 

Besides, the extinction of the sinner would not be the extinction 
of his sin ; that would live on, in some of its effects, for ever — 
an inextinguishable protest against the perfection of the Divine 
government : while jet the sinner himself who first uttered the 
protest is supposed to to be placed for ever, bj an act of that 
government, beyond the reach of punishment. For, further, 
the extinction of being is an escape from punishment ; so that 
here would be the singular anomaly, that while the dread of 
punishment is punishment, the infliction itself, is the termination 
of all punishment. In addition to which it is to be remarked 
that the very prospect held out of unending happiness in the 
event of obedience, supposed a nature capable of hoping for 
and desiring it. Now the same constitution which renders man 
capable of hoping, renders him capable of fearing to the same 
extent. But if it was never intended that such fear should be 
realized in the event of disobedience, here is the further anoma- 
ly of a part of the human constitution to which there is nothing 
whatever in the objective and the future to correspond. "We 
believe, then that the soul of man was made originally immortal; 
not necessai'ily, indeed, or independently of the Divine will (as 
if it were a substance inherently and absolutely indestructible) 
but naturally ; iiTespective, that is, of its subsequent moral char- 
acter ; and that disobedience leaves its mere duration untouched. 
14. Now both the objective and the subjective argument for 
man's immortality are distinctly implied in the threatening of 
the primal prohibition. " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou 
shalt surely die." The obvious alternative to this penalty was, 
the Divine guarrantee that if man did not violate the law, his 
obedience should exempt him from every evil which stands in 
opposition to a holy and happy existence. And of this unend- 
ing happy life " the tree of the life in the midst of the garden," 
was appointed to be, not indeed the instrumental cause, though 
possibly its properties were highly medicinal, but the appropri- 
ate symbol, and the appointed pledge. 

The fact that death was threatened as the forfeiture of un- 
limited good, implied the subjective argument also, for it ap- 
pealed to man's love of happiness. We say that the death 
threatened, imphed (as is not uncommon in Scripture) the loss of 
all that belongs to a holy and happy existence : nor does there 
appear to be any substantial ground whatever for the common 
conclusion that it contemplated the extinction on the day of 
transgression of man's bodily life. We do not take this view 
on account of any supposed difl&culty respecting the manner in 



178 MAN. 

which. th€ first man could have come to know what natural 
death was. His Divine instructor might have described it to 
him as a formidable evil, of which he might have consequently 
stood in undefined dread. The leaf which fluttered and fell at 
Ms feet was an emblem of death — was death. The ephemera 
which perished under his eye at the close of day, the insect 
which the pressure of his own foot unwittingly crushed, the an- 
imalcules which the larger animals unavoidably imbibed as 
they drank at the river's brink, and the destruction of those 
insects on which some animals are constructed to live, and with- 
out which they themselves would die, any, or all of these phe- 
nomena might have been employed to enable him to apprehend 
natural death as a fearful evil. 

15. But that bodily dissolution not only falls short of the 
penalty denounced, but was not specified in it, appears probable 
on these considerations. — First, that as the evil to be guarded 
against was of a moral nature, the penalty threatened might be 
antecedently expected to be connatural with it, and that natural 
evils would only follow incidentally. Secondly, that the un- 
quahfied and absolute form of the threatening is that which is 
employed in Scripture to denote spiritual death alone, quite 
irrespective of corporal death.* Thirdly, that man's dissolution 
did not take place on the day of transgression, but was on that 
day predicted as a yet future event. Fourthly, that it was not 
named even on that day until after the promise of a Deliverer 
had been given, leaving it to be inferred that it had formed no 
part of the primal threatening. For with what propriety could 
a promise of entire deliverance from the original penalty be 
immediately followed by an intimation that a portion of it must 
yet be endured ? And, fifclily, the death of the body is named 
as only one of a series of evils, including corporal toil, pain, 
and prolonged sorrow ; and surely these latter were not directly 
included in the primal threatening, for the instant extinction of 
man's bodily life would have made them impossible. From 
all of which we infer, on the one hand, that the penalty threat- 
ened consisted of the death of the soul, the ahenation of the 
heart from God, the loss of " His favor which is life," and the 
endurance of His displeasure ; and, on the other, that bodily 
toil, pain, and dissolution ensued, on man's transgression, as the 
appropriate exponents, and sensible mementoes of man's fallen 

* Deut. XXX. 15 : Psalm xxx. 5 ; Prov. viii. 35, 36 ; John iii. 36 ; Eom, 
V. 17 ; &c. 



o 



PROGRESSION. • 179» 

condition. Had his spiritual nature maintained its standing of 
love and obedience to God — its natural state — his physical 
nature would have continued to enjoy preternatural exemption 
from the laws of pain and death belonging to the whole animal 
economy. But having brought himself spiritually into an un- 
natural state, and so incurred the threatened penalty of spiritual 
death, he was allowed to fall physically from a state of preter- 
natural exemption down to the pre-existing laws of animal suf- 
fering and death. 

16. As to the question where, in the event of man's perse- 
vering obedience, his immortahty would have been spent, or 
the objection, that he could not have continued to live here for 
ever — an objection which is sometimes urged in a tone which 
almost implies that man must, sooner or later, have sinned, if 
only in accommodating compUance with that impossibility — we 
have only to reply, that the universe of worlds was open then 
for the localization of unfallen man, as it is now for redeemed 
man ; that he might have spent his immortality where the un- 
fallen angels are enjoying theirs ; and that, without " tasting 
death," he might, like Enoch and Elijah, have been translated, 
generation after generation, to a nobler state of existence. A 
more interesting speculation would it be to follow him into that 
higher sphere, and to imagine what his attainments and dis- 
tinctions might there have been: whether, for instance, he 
would not have been qualified and employed to become the 
exemplar, in knowledge, in purity, and in spiritual excellence, 
of other orders of intelligent beings, himself ascending from 
throne to throne in an ever-advancing career of glory. But 
this is to speculate on a hypothesis. It is enough for us to find 
that man was from the beginning destined to an immortahty of 
existence, and that this sovereign appointment, implied in the 
sanction of the first law, harmonized with all the laws of the 
Divine manifestation. Such was the theology of innocent man 
— a powerful, wise, and beneficent Creator, the object of wor- 
ship ; that Creator his equitable moral governor ; and immortal 
hfe in prospect as the reward of his obedience, and a threatened 
death, standing for all that is opposed to life, as the deserved 
penalty of disobedience. 

17. Here, then, both in the constitution and condition of 
man is the progress sought. God has now first a representative 
on earth — a son.* And he, " fearfully and wonderfully made," 

* Lake, iii. 38. 



180 • MAN. 

finds himself in circumstances suggestive of, and coiTesponding 
to, Lis high relation. Nature offers itself to his eye, a glorious 
picture-poem, waiting to be read. In relation to the pre-ex- 
isting creatures, his every seat is a throne, and he walks to it 
through ranks of objects not made with hands. His unuttered 
inquiries are answered by hints and intimations from a Divine 
instructor. He is joined by one whose presence reveals to him 
the resources of his heart. Every word articulated was new 
to nature, and above it. Every voluntary act disclosed some 
wonder of his being : he can beHeve, he can love, he can obey, 
and still he is conscious of a reserve of wonders. Principles 
before at large are now lodged; his person encloses them. 
The Lawgiver speaks to him, and Eden becomes an anticipa- 
tion of Sinai ; and the mere purpose to obey — a purpose till 
now unknown on earth, gladdens all nature, and sanctifies it. 
The dial of time was now first set for worship, that he might 
consecrate its moments. Divine properties in him are incar- 
nated — humanized. He is in " the image of God." So true 
is this, that his conception of God is the only one which can 
satisfy his idea of perfect excellence. External nature cannot 
realize it. It suggests far more than it exhibits. This is its 
highest function, to make the mind conscious of its superiority 
to outward things, even to those which come direct from the 
Creator's hand, and so to make it aware of its connaturalness 
with Him. The " angel standing in the midst of the sun " did 
not occupy a prouder position than ^nnocent man placed in the 
midst of nature. Through him everything pointed away, as in 
rays of Hght, to God. He was the infonning spirit of the 
whole. A mind had come to fill up the vacancy between earth 
and heaven. While the invisible tribunal within him looked 
away to the unlimited sphere of the distant and the future, peo- 
pled, not with shadows, but with hardly concealed forms of glory 
or of terror. 



CHAPTER IV, 



CONTINUITY. 



1. Man is not an abnormal and unconnected part of the sys- 
tem in which he appears. Though " crowned with glory and 



O 



CONTINUITY. 181 

honor," his " foundation is in the dust." He is the last member 
of the advancing and related series of which he stands at the 
head. In other words, through man, " the Divine manifesta- 
tion, besides being progressive is continuous, or is progressive 
by being continuous." 

2. Even the creative process, which ended in man's produc- 
tion, did not introduce a new system of nature. It took its 
place in the great plan as preceding changes had done ; and as 
those epochs had been manifestly local, so 'the Adamic creation 
was no doubt compatible with the uninterrupted maintenance 
of life in places beyond its own immediate sphere. Preceding 
epochs exhibit a gradual increase in the number of species till 
we reach the multitudes of existing species ; as well as the 
gradual conformity of the successive animal creations to the 
existing types. The human creation is only the most advanced 
part of a system of many preceding stages. 

3. Man stands also in chronological continuity with the past. 
According to the sacred liistorian, the production of man was 
the continuous and crowning act of a six days' series of crea- 
tions. Of the different systems of sacred chronology — the 
Samaritan, the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and that of Josephus — 
we adopt the computation which results from the guidance of 
the latter two, as exhibited by Jackson, Hales, RusseU, and 
Wallace ; * giving a period of from 5411 to 5478 years from the 
creation to the Advent of Christ. The difference of this time, 
indeed, as compared with the vitiated computations of the He- 
brew text, (for doubtless its chronology agreed originally with 
that of the Septuagint — rather, the chronology of the Septua- 
gint was derived from it,) amounts to nearly 1500 years. But 
even this longer period makes the date of man's origin to be 
"but of yesterday." Whether or not any beings of other 
species may have been called into existence since the time of 
man's introduction, upon the earth, is a subject which does not 
affect the question before us. We only affirm that man's crea- 
tion was an event in chronological continuity with a series 
of creative acts : that in addition to the power, and wisdom, 
and goodness of the Creator previously displayed by these acts, 
man appeared as a manifestation of his Maker's moral charac- 
ter ; and that his introduction dates from ahout the compara- 



* See Jackson's " Chronological Antiquities ; " Hales' " Analysis of 
Chronology ; " Russell's " Connection of Sacred and Profane History," 
&c. ; and Prof Wallace's " Time Age of the World." 

16 



182 MAN. 

tively recent period which we have specified. The distance of 
the creation from the Christian era, indeed, is different as esti- 
mated by different systems of chronology. The Indian chro- 
nology, as compnted by Gentil, ^vould make the interval 6174 
years; tlie Babylonian, by Bailly, 6158 ; and the Chinese, by 
Bailly, 6157.* But this difference, considering the proneness 
of every early nation to antedate its existence, surprises by its 
minuteness rather than by its magnitude, and justifies our con- 
fidence in the Biblical chronology as interpreted by the Septua- 
gint. Still further is the recency of man's origin confirmed by 
obvious inferences from the actual state and number of the spe- 
cies. How, for example, is the incipient state of many of the 
arts and sciences, compared with the progress of human discov- 
ery, to be accounted for ; or the scantiness of the world's popu- 
lation, compared with its ever-multiplying and expansive power ; 
or the absence of all remains of man and of his works, (as far 
as research has hitherto gone,) from even the latest of the ter- 
tiary beds, except on the supposition of his comparatively mod- 
ern introduction on the earth ? 

4. The order of man's appearance exhibits him also in geo- 
logical continuity with the classes of animated nature to which 
he stands most nearly related. /Geology, indeed, affords no 
ground whatever for the hypothesis of a regular succession of 
creatures, beginning with the simplest forms in the older strata, 
and ascending to the more complicated in the later formations. 
The earliest forms of life known to geology are not of the lowest 
grade of organization ; neither are the earliest forms of any of 
the classes which appear subsequently, the simplest of their 
kind. Still, the succession of the vertebral classes is remarka- 
ble. For, notwithstanding subordinate exceptions to regular 
progress, the geological order in which w^e find these classes is 
that of an ascending series — fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals ; 
and, at the head of the last of these classes, and the latest in 
time, comes man. / 

Among the subordinate exceptions to regular zoological 



* The chronology of Egypt is still undetermined. M. Bunsen begins 
his exposition of it with Menes, whom he places, a. c. 3643. But even 
his friendly reviewer in the Quarterly questions the personal existence of 
Menes, observing, that there is no documentary evidence of it — that 
Menu among the Hindus, Minos, and Minyas among the Greeks, Minerva 
among the Etruscans, and Mannus among the Gennans, are the tradi- 
tional authors of civilization, and that the name is always Hnked with a 
root denoting mind as the faculty, and man as the agent. 



M 



CONTINUITY. 183 

progression to which I refer, it may be proper to instance such 
quadrumana as the orang, the ape, and the monkey. The non- 
discovery for a time of any trace of these tribes among the fos- 
sil records of extinct mammaha, had led some to the conclusion, 
that this type of organization, most nearly resembhng the hu- 
man, came so late in the order of creation as to be Httle anterior 
to that of man. Recent discoveries, however, have abundantly 
shown that the inference was premature. A great number of 
extinct species are now added to our fossil- collection of tertiary 
mammalia. The bones of a gibbon, or one of the tail-less apes, 
standing next in the scale of organization to the orang, were 
found in 1837 in the South of France ; but they were imbedded 
in strata probably of the miocene, or middle tertiary period, 
and were accompanied by the remains of the mastodon, dinothe- 
rium, palaeotherium, and other extinct quadrupeds. While the 
British quadrumane, discovered in 1839 near Woodbridge, in 
Suffolk, occurred in a still more ancient stratum, and belongs 
to an extinct species.* 
^. The physical structure of man places him in a zoological 
line with pre-existing animals. The misconception and abuse 
of this fact have led to a theory of development, according to 
wliich an unbroken chain of gradually advanced organization 
has been evolved from the crystal to the globule, and thence 
through the successive stages of the polypus, the mollusk, the 
insect, the fish, the reptile, the bird, and the beast, up to the 
monkey, and the man. As this untenable idea came under 
examination in the previous Treatise, and will be adverted to 
again in the next chapter, I will only at present offer two re- 
marks upon it. First, that the continuity which it advocates, 
even if its existence could be substantiated, would be only ap- 
parent or general. No two species so nearly approach as not 
to leave room for an intermediate third. However slight the 
break where one animal may appear to graduate into another, 
such an interruption there is ; and it is nothing less than an in- 
terruption in kind, a transition from identity to essential differ- 
ence. But, secondly, such transmutation is unknown. No 
animal shows any signs of graduating into an animal of a higher 
cla.^*^, much less into a human beingT^^ 

But, speaking generally, the typfe on which the animal and 
human structures are formed, is one. The type of the human 
hand, for example, is found in beings which existed prior to the 

* See Lyell's " Principles," etc. c. ix. 



184 MAK. 

creation of man. Certain analogies exist also in the structure of 
the brain between some of the Simiae and man. Professor Owen, 
indeed, has demonstrated that these resemblances have been 
greatly over-rated ; and that, while in man the facial angle is, 
in the average of Europeans, 80°, in the adult chimpanzee, 
which in this respect approaches the nearest to man, the facial 
angle is only 35°, and in the orang or satyr 30°. " The ape 
compared with man," says Professor Kidd, "may indeed be 
among other animals ' proximus huic ;' still, however, it must 
be added 'longo sed proximus intervallo.' " In other words, 
the physical continuity of which we speak is found to consist 
with essential difference and with a permanency of specific form. 
The identity of the species is unchangeable. Even the higher 
phenomena of the human mind are not without their suggestive 
pre-intimations in the animal world. The impelled volitions of 
the brute will, is a faint foreshadowing of man's free will, and 
an apt picture of the constrained condition to which it may be 
reduced. And even the conscience may be regarded as having 
an inadequate precursor in the resentful rage of the animal 
when suffering from the hand of man, though of the moral qual- 
ity of justice it knows nothing. Mere external resemblances of 
this nature abound ; nor can there be any danger in allowing 
the imagination to indulge itself in tracing them, provided the 
mind does not lose sight of the still greater differences. 
/^6. The serial character of the Adamic creation, then; the 
chronological relation in which man stands to the great process; 
the order of his appearance in respect to the particular classes 
of animal life to which he belongs ; and his relation to pre- 
existing types of physical structure, all show that he is an inte- 
gral part of the great system into which he has come. He was 
meant, for a time at least, to be at home in it. To disturb it, 
would be to derange his own nature. If he would understand it, 
he must study it. If he would command it, he must obey its 
laws. Such is the harmony between it and him, that in pro- 
portion as he develops its resources, he promotes his own 
self-development. And while his intellectual distinction, as 
compared with animated nature, consists in his perception of 
this fact, and in his consciously acting on it, his moral preroga- 
tive lies in the power which he possesses of viewing the creation 
as the symboHcal utterance of the Creator's perfections, and of 
voluntarily making it the occasion of a homage which places 
him in communion with the Uncreated.> 



r^ 



■^ DEVELOPMENT. 185 

CHAPTER V. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

1. We have seen that man takes up into his constitution the 
distinctive characteristics of the higher classes of animals. The 
law of development leads us to expect " that the same character- 
istics and properties which existed in the preceding and inferior 
stage of creation will be found to be not only brought on to the 
present, but to be in a more advanced condition, in the sense of 
being expressed in higher forms, or applied to higher purposes, 
(if it be not entirely superseded by something superior ;) or that 
it will be in the power of the subsequent and superior production 
so to render or to apply it." For as, by tlie great law of the 
Divine manifestation, everything is in alliance and dependence ; 
and as everything looks on to an end beyond itself, its nature, 
or its relations and results, may be expected to advance, the 
further it proceeds from its original starting-point towards the 
distant end for the sake of which it exists.^V^he development 
of which we speak, it will be remarked, is not of one thing from 
another, but of the Divine plan of creation, and of our concep- 
tions of that plan. I 

/it has been sKown already (in the preceding chapter) that 
man is, geologically speaking, of recent origin. Chronologically, 
the inspired records anticipated this conclusion, by describing 
man as the crowning production of the Adamic creation. And 
regarded zoologically, as ranking among the mammalia, it is 
found that the series of structures modelled on this particular 
type, after exhibiting the gradual development of its character- 
istic elements, attains a point of perfection in man wliich places 
him at the summit of the scale of terrestrial beingsy^ 

2. Physiologists point out numerous particulars m which man 
specifically differs from, and surpasses the physical structure 
and physiological constitution of such animals as make the nearest 
approximation to him.f The most obvious of these distinctions 
is his erect posture. " Man presents the only instance among 
the mammalia of a conformation by which the erect posture can 
be permanently maintained, and in which the office of support- 

* The Pre- Adamite Earth, p. 52. 

t Blumenbach's De generis Humani Varietate Nativa, § 1. 
16* 



186 MAN. 

ing the trunk of the body is consigned exclusively to the lower 
extremities." Even M. Lesson, while affirming that the Simiae, 
in general organization, are nearer to man than to the brutes, 
lays it down as a perfectly ascertained fact, that it is only by 
accident, Oir external help, or painful training, that the orangs 
tread for a few moments on their posterior limbs alone, or inse- 
curely keep themselves in an upright position. In man, however, 
the length of the heel-bone, the form of the foot, the broad, 
articular surfaces of the knee-joint, the muscular swelling of the 
calves, the length of the leg, the width and direction of the pelvis, 
the manner in which the head is placed on the spinal column, 
and the adjustments of the organs of sense, all combine to mark 
the intention of the Divine Creator that man should maintain 
an upright attitude.* ' How many excellences,' exclaims Cicero, 
' God has bestowed upon mankind ! He has raised them from 
the ground and made them lofty and erect.'f The os homini 
suhlime, of Ovid, celebrates the same organic distinction. The 
primary and most striking advantage of this arrangement is, that 
the anterior limbs, the arms and hands, by being exempted from 
the service to which other animals apply them, are left at liberty 
to be employed by man as instruments of prehension and touch. 
3. This brings us to remark on that structure of unrivalled 
excellence, the human hand ; for were it not differently consti- 
tuted from the anterior hmb of other animals, in vain would be 
its exemption from the office of supporting the body. The limb 
which comes nearest to the human hand is the paw of the adult 
chimpanzee. But its distinguishing pecuharity is the smallness 
of the thumb, (so insignificant as to have been termed by Eusta- 
chius " omnino ridiculus") which " extends no further than to the 
root of the fingers. Now, it is upon the length, strength, free 
lateral motion, and perfect mobiUty of the thumb, that the power 
of the human hand depends. The thumb is called poZ/ex, because 
of its strength ; and that strength is necessary to the power of 
the hand, being equal to that of all the fingers. Without the 
fleshy ball of the thumb, the power of the fingers would avail 
nothing ; and accordingly, the large ball, formed by the muscles 
of the thumb, is the distinguishing character of the human hand, 
and especially of that of an expert workman.." J Doubtless, the 

=* Dr. Elliotson's Human Physiology, c. 1. p. 9 ; Dr. Prichard's Re- 
searches, etc. Vol. I. p. 171, etc. 
t Cicero's Nat. Deor. lib. ii. p. 173. 
X Sh C. Bell's Treatise on the Hand, p. 121. 



r^ 



DEVELOPMENT. 187 

variously formed and armed extremities of other animals give 
them great advantages. " But to man," says Galen, " the Crea- 
tor has given, in lieu of every other natural weapon or organ of 
defence, that instrument, the hand; an instrument applicable to 
every art and occasion, as well of peace as of war. Rightly has 
Aristotle defined the hand to be the instrument antecedent to, 
or productive of, all other instruments."* 

Were we aiming to establish the right of man, then, to occupy 
the summit of the zoological pyramid, whether we compared 
his physical claims with the claims of any other single species, 
or with the selected and aggregate perfections of the whole ani- 
mal creation, we could be content to rely on the mechanism and 
endowments of the hand alone. Such is its perfection, in these 
respects, that some philosophers, like Anaxagoras in ancient, 
and Helvetius in modern times, have ascribed man's superiority 
to his hand alone. True, his advancement is owing ultimately 
to his intellectual power. Yet with hoofs instead of hands, he 
would be physically unable to construct the simplest instruments. 
It is his hand which executes the plans which his mind con- 
ceives ; though it does no more. It is the human hand which 
multiplies its own power by adding to it the wheel, the axle, 
and all the mechanical powers ; which appropriates the strength 
of one animal, and the swiftness of another ; which, by the con- 
struction of suitable instruments, increases indefinitely our powers 
of hearing and of sight ; and gives us that complete dominion 
we possess over the various forms of matter. Man, then, is supe- 
rior in organization to all other animals ; for his hand is not an 
isolated part, or a thing appended ; every part of his frame con- 
forms to it, and acts with reference to it. Yet the bones whose 
distribution we so much admire in the human arai and hand, we 
recognize in the fin of the whale, in the paddle of the turtle, in 
the wing of the bird, and in the paw of the lion or the bear. 
But concerning men it was the pleasure of the Creator to say, 
" Let them have dominion over all these :" and He devised and 
created the human hand as the instrument of acquiring that do- 
minion. 

4. Ascending from the mechanism of man's structure to the 
functions of his organic life, we find that he is distinguished by 
that kind of superiority which his social and moral relations 
might have led us to expect. The form and arrangement of 

* Quoted in Prof. Kidd's Bridgewater Treatise on the Physical Con- 
dition of Man, p. 33. 



188 MAN. 

his teeth, as well as the structure of his digestive organs, show 
that he is omnivorous, or capable of subsisting alike on vege- 
table and animal food, while his means of culinary preparation, 
and his natural and artificial means of adapting himself to the 
temperature, better qualify him for every variety of soil and 
climate than any other animal. Hence he is found alike in the 
arctic circle, and under the equator, and supporting the widely 
different degrees of atmospheric pressure in valleys, and on lofty 
table lands, ten thousand feet high. And it is singular that the 
animals which make the nearest approach to him in structure 
should be among those which, in this respect of geographical 
distribution, differ most widely from him — such as the chim- 
panzee and ourang-outang. Now, as we found animal existence 
superior to vegetable, partly because it is rendered independent 
of local situation for food, and enjoys the liberty of moving from 
place to place, the superiority of human existence to mere ani- 
mal life, in this respect, is proportionate to the wider sphere in 
which he is free to range. Yet who but the Maker of man 
could have known that his nutritive system was thus general- 
ized, as the fact is implied in the primitive appointment, '' Be- 
hold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon 
the face of all the earth, and every tree on which is fruit bear- 
ing seed ; to you it shall be for food." And the system of nu- 
trition thus generalized is, remarks Roget, one vast laboratory, 
where mechanism is subservient to chemistry, where chemistry 
is the agent of the higher powers of vitality, and where these 
powers themselves minister to the more exalted faculties of sen- 
sation and intellect. 

5. Still more marked is the superiority of man if we ascend 
to the department of his animal life. Here, that relation of the 
sexes which is a law of the whole animated kingdom, is the 
means of producing intellectual improvement and moral excel- 
lence. For this we are prepared by the mspired historian of 
Eden. " And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
the man, and he slept : and he took out one of his ribs, and 
closed up the flesh in its place. And Jehovah God formed 
[built up] the rib which he had taken from the man into a 
woman, and he brought her to the man. And the man said, 
this now is it* — bone out of my bones, and flesh out of my 
; this shall be called woman, for out of man was this 



* Meaning — " now at length I see a being like myself, one of my own 
species," referring to ver. 20. 



O 



DEVELOPMENT. 189 

taken."* In this simple and tender narrative it is intimated 
that the creation of woman was the filling up of a divine plan 
for the paradisiacal well-being of man, and was essential to it ; 
that, prior to such creation, man felt " the unsufficingness of 
liimself for himself;" that the first woman was connatural with, 
and a part of, the first man ; that she was presented to Adam 
by the hand of God ; that she was received by Adam as his 
other self, the supplement and complement of his own being ; 
and that they were regarded by God as being (in a sense here- 
after to be explained) indissolubly one. And thus, while 
among the inferior animals the sexual relation contemplates a 
specific end, which, generally speaking, begins and ends with 
itself, here, propensity is promoted into moral principle ; tem- 
porary connection into the sacred and enauring bond of mar- 
riage ; the daily utterances of external life into " the outward 
and visible signs of an inward sacrament" of sanctified love. 
Here, the tenderness and susceptibility of one sex are to exer- 
cise a refining influence on the sterner attributes of the other, 
while these again are to re-act in fortifpng and eimobhng the 
character of the former ; the distinguishing excellences of each 
being added to the other. 

6. The gregarious instinct of certain animal species is re- 
placed in man by the social principle. The relation of the 
sexes is made eminently subservient to this very purpose, and 
other means are added to it. By making " of one blood all 
nations of men" — by giving the human race the same parentage, 
all its members sustain from the beginning a family relation- 
ship ; by creating at first only one man and woman, and by per- 
petuating the sexes ever since in the same numerical propor- 
tion, wise and gracious provision is made for the cultivation of 
those family affections which are the foundation of all other 
affections ; by prolonging the period of human infancy and help- 
lessness so much beyond the period of dependence with the 
young of mere animals ; and by thus giving the mother an op- 
portunity of instilling her own yearning affection into the child, 
the child an opportunity of acquiring a deep sense of fihal obli- 
gation, and the children time for cementing the pure union of 
brotherly and sisterly affection, further scope is afforded for the 

* Gen. ii. 21 — 23. The verse following, " Therefore shall a man leave 
his fkther and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one 
flesh" — is doubtless the inspired application of the narrative — the formal 
authentication of the great law of marriage as inserted and founded in the 
original constitution of human nature. 



190 MAN. 

full development of the social affections. Sometimes, indeed, 
we hear certain species of the Simia3 tribe vaguely spoken of 
as apparently resembling man in many of his social habits. But 
sociality, though based in the union of the sexes, does not be- 
long to man's animal nature ; it is an attribute of his intellectual 
and moral constitution. Hence, while the bond of cohesion 
among animals remains stationary from age to age, the social 
principle in humanity has shown itself capable of perpetual de- 
velopment. And the Divine appointment that man should take 
possession of the earth, and have dominion over it, plainly re- 
ferred us to each other's help, and implied the mutual depend- 
ence and co-operation of social life. And, wliat is strikingly 
distinctive of man, the earth may be said to be covered with 
monumental proofs* of affection for departed friends, of the con- 
viction that they survive elsewhere, and of the hope that in 
some other state the social principle will triumph m the re-union 
of those whom death has temporarily severed. 

7. With respect to the sensorial functions m man, they will 
be found to be either in themselves, or in their application, in 
advance of those of animals. It is generally allowed that few 
of any class of animals excels man in more than in one of the 
senses. But it seems to have escaped remark, that no animal 
probably excels man in the use of any one sense in more than 
in one or two respects, and these directly connected with the 
preservation and propagation of life, while in every other re- 
spect man may excel the animal, even in the use of that par- 
ticular sense. The sight of the hawk, for example, may be 
more acute for a special purpose — that of perceiving a small 
object at a great distance below it, but unless it could be shown 
that it is capable of sweeping the magnificence of the midnight 
heavens, of combining in one view a whole field of separate ob- 
jects — say an army, of looking steadily at the same objects for 
hours together, and of enjoying alike the presence of artificial 
and of natural hght, the only case made out is one, not of supe- 
riority, but simply of variety. 

Now, (to say nothing of that robe of civilizing sensibility, the 
human skin,) the sense of touch — the only sense, perhaps, 
common to the whole animal creation — attains its greatest per- 
fection in the human hand. Taste enlarges our range of sense- 
perceptions, by making us acquainted with tLe qualities of bodies 
in a fluid or liquefied state. Smell still further extends our 

* Dr. Prichard lias an elegant paragraph (6) on this subject in his 
" Researches." Vol. I., c. ii., § 2. 



O 



DEVELOPMENT. 191 

circle of perception, by acquainting us with the quahties of 
bodies in their volatile and gaseous state. And though within 
certain limits some animals may possess these senses in greater 
perfection than man, the probability is, that in man they are ca- 
pable of application to a much greater variety of objects ; and 
that over and above their direct utility, they become to him a 
source of enjoyment which the animal is denied. This is cer- 
tainly the case with the sense of hearing, which still further 
widens our range of perception. In the construction of this 
organ, a gradation can be traced from the simplest form of 
which it is susceptible in the lower animals through eight or 
nine successive additions, till we arrive at the combination of 
the whole in the higher orders of the mammalia, and find them 
finally, in their most highly developed state in man. The 
hearing of some animals, indeed, may comprehend a range of 
vibrations which escapes the human ear. But more probable 
is it that our ear perceives sounds which theirs cannot, and that 
it commands a greater scale of sounds. And this, moreover, is 
certain, that the human ear perceives the relation of sounds in 
a manner denied to animals, and that from the harmony of 
sounds man derives some of his deepest emotions. Sight en- 
larges our field of perception to the utmost by taking us beyond 
the range of animal existence, and enabhng us to explore the 
remote regions of creation. And here, again, from the first 
appearance of visual organs among the infusoria we can trace 
successive degrees of refinement, and extensions of power, till 
we come to those of quadrupeds which agree in their general 
structure with the human eye. In the lower quadrupeds, how- 
ever the eyes — to name no other difference — are placed lat- 
erally, " so that the optic axes form a very obtuse angle with 
each other." Approaching the quadrumana, we find this angle 
becoming smaller. In the human species, the axes of the two 
orbits, approach nearer to parallelism than in any of the other 
mammaha; and the fields of vision of both eyes coincide nearly 
in their whole extent. This is probably a circumstance of con- 
siderable importance with regard to our acquisition of correct 
perceptions by this sense. 

8. Facts demonstrate, however, that the perfection of man's 
perceptions exceeds the comparative perfection of his different 
organs of sense. The reason of this superiority, therefore, 
must be looked for either in the brain, in the percipient mind, 
or in the brain employed as the organ of the mind. 

One of the modes employed for the classification of animals 



192 MAN. 

is based on the difference of the nervous system, which they 
progressively exhibit. This system consists of nerves and 
variously shaped masses of nervous matter, or ganglia, distrib- 
uted, in some animals, symmetrically, and in others irregularly ; 
and also, in vertebrals, of a spinal chord, and a brain in a bony 
skull. Physiology points out a threefold division of the nerves — 
the sj^mpathetic, the sensitive, and the motor. Of these, the 
office of the sympathetic nerves is simply to maintain life ; hence 
they are distributed over every part connected with nutrition, 
respiration, and circulation ; and like those parts, they act spon- 
taneously, without any cognizance or effort of the living being. 
These involuntary nerves of organic life are regarded as com- 
mon to all animated nature ; and probably they are the only 
kind of nerves which the lowest classes of animals possess. 
The sensitive nerves subserve a higher purpose. They form the 
nerves of the several senses, or the media by wliicli external 
objects become the occasions of perceptions ; each sense having 
its own special nerve endowed with its peculiar properties, and 
being affected according to its own proper function even when 
all are acted on by the same stimulus. The motoi^ nerves re- 
late to the power of voluntary motion. And it is to be observed 
that while the sensitive system of nerves communicates to the 
brain, the motor system issues from the brain to the organs of 
action. 

9. Now, on comparing the relative proportions of the brain 
and nerves in the four classes of vertebrated animals, Tiedemann 
and others have shown that there is a regulai* progression as we 
ascend from fishes to reptiles, birds, and mammalia. Further, 
the brain itself is naturally divided into the cerebellum or little 
brain, and the large hemispheres of the cerebrum ; the former 
lying at the posterior base of the latter, and thought to contain 
the nerves of the instinctive propensities ; the cerebrum being, 
by supposition, related more directly to the functions of the 
intellect ; and it is in the cerebral hemispheres chiefly that this 
progressive enlargement of the brain is seen — an enlargement 
which appears to require that the convoluted mass should be 
folded and packed, in order that the cranium might contain it. 
Now, on looking at the human brain, this gradation of devel- 
opment is found to be rather disturbed, than continued by the 
great and sudden increase of its size,* and this chiefly in the 

* Some pretend to discover a striking resemblance between the brain 
of the orang-outang and that of man. But, in the first place, the differ- 
ence in their volume is as five to one, &c. Gall, Let. vi. p. 298. 



DEVELOPMENT. 193 

expansion of the hemispheres. And still furtlier it is slio^^n 
not only that it is in these cerebral parts, eight or nine times 
larger than the cerebellum, and that the human brain exceeds, 
in proportion to the rest of the nervous system, that of other 
animals, but that, when fully developed, it contains parts which 
do not exist in the brain of any other animal species. Whence 
it is to be inferred that the intellectual superiority of man, as 
far as its physical conditions are concerned, depends on the dis- 
tinctive peculiarity of his brain. 

10. But do not these facts countenance the embryotic hypo- 
thesis which teaches that the organic germs of all animals are 
identical, and that the higher animals while in the womb, pass 
through all the successive conditions whicli, in the lower grades 
of animals, are pennanent ; the human brain, for example, as- 
suming in its formation the characters of the brain in the fish, 
the reptile, the bird, and the quadruped successively? Doubt- 
less, we reply, if the hypothesis were first established on its 
own proper evidence, the facts we have adduced would har- 
monize with it, up to a certain point — the point, namely, 
where the mind asserts its independence of matter. But the 
hypothesis itself is without proof. The resemblances observ- 
able between the embryo of different animals imply chiefly the 
imperfection of our tests. Mere hkeness is mistaken for iden- 
tity. The analogy relates only to some one organ, or part of 
the foetus, at a time ; the likeness becoming apparent only by 
dint of refusing to see the attendant differences. The serial 
character of the supposed development fails in the most essen- 
tial parts ; such as the primitive trace exhibiting the rudiment 
of a backbone instead of a vegetable resemblance ; the heart 
of the foetus of a mammal not passing through the form which 
is permanent in the amphibia, though it does pass through a 
form not found permanent in any known creature; and in 
numerous similar instances. Even by those who look favorably 
on the hypothesis, it is admitted that " the brain of the human 
foetus at no time precisely resembles that of any individual 
whatever among the lower animals." The truth appears to be 
that, as soon as ever organs begin to be distinguishable, the dis- 
tinctions are found to be specific. And, as far as we know any- 
thing on the subject, these specific differences are constant and 
inunu table. 

11. So also the facts which we have adduced might seem to 
harmonize with that theory of Transmutation which teaches 
that originally there was no distinction of species, but that 

17 



194 MAN. 

eacli class has in the course of ages been derived from some 
different class, less perfect than itself, bj a spontaneous effort at 
improvement. First, however, the theory itself must be based 
on independent evidence. Now the observations of mankind 
for thousands of years have furnished no instance of a trans- 
mutation of species. The crowded worlds of fossil geology 
present no remains whatever of any species in a state of tran- 
sition into any other species ; not even a trace of any char- 
acteristic part of a species having exhibited such progress. 
Striking as the resemblance may be between any two species, 
still, what more can be said than that the difference is specific ? 
The hypothesis supposes, moreover, that the propensities of an 
animal determine its organization, for it assumes that the struc- 
tural peculiarities of a species have resulted from its prolonged 
efforts at something for which it was not originally adapted. 
But if the organization, so far either from being one with the 
propensity, or from giving direction to it, has had actually to be 
conformed to it, what, we ask, determines the j)i'opensity ? or 
whence this presupposed organizing, creative propensity ? Be- 
sides, all the great changes of animal conformation which come 
under our notice are prospective ; taking place, not in conse- 
quence of a new condition, but in preparation fOr it ; thus, the 
embryotic life of the animal is subordinate to the formation of 
organs for a life after birth. It is only in accordance with this 
fact to add, that the brain of the savage is prospective of his 
civilization. Great as is the difference between the civilized 
and the uncivilized man, there is no perceptible distinction in 
the cerebral organs of the two. Soemmering has enumerated 
as many as fifteen important anatomical differences between the 
human brain and that of the ape ; and these are all cresent in the 
brain of the least cultivated of the human species, y^n a word, the 
only deviations from specific forms with which we ai-e acquainted 
are those of monsters, or of lusus naturne, in which, instead of 
the brain of an individual of a lower class being promoted into 
that of a higher, the brain of an individual of a higher class is 
arrested in its growth at some stage short of its full develop- 
ment ; and we are presented ^vith retrogression instead of ad- 
vancement. For the reasons stated, then, we see in that cere- 
bral gradation which finds its perfection in man, not the opera- 
tion of a self-evolving law, or the necessary self-development 
of any supposed powers in nature, but the progressive develop- 
ment of the Divine plan respecting nature. / 

12. Nor do the facts we have adduced i<especting the human 



O 



DEVELOPMENT. 195 

brain afford any adequate support to phrenology as a science. 
They evince, indeed, that there is a connection between the 
brain and our mental manifestations ; but this is widely remote 
from the notion that mind is an essential property of brain, as 
well as from the fundamental law of phrenology — " That the 
power of any mental feeling or faculty is measured directly and 
necessarily by the size of the organ." The investigations to 
which phrenology has led have doubtless resulted in valuable 
additions to cerebral physiology. But were the data neces- 
sary for his system as full and complete as the most ardent 
phrenologist could desire, he could contribute nothing whatever 
directly to the science of psychology. His science is physiology ; 
and in all his cerebral researches he is presupposing a psychol- 
ogy, assuming certain mental faculties as ah^eady known on other 
grounds. All that he can properly undertake is to distribute 
and place them in different parts of the brain. Consciousness 
first supplies the mental facts, observation is his only guide in 
physiology. His very data, however, are at present incomplete 
and unsatisfactory. Whether or not, for example, there are 
distinct portions of the brain for distinct mental faculties; 
whetheV or not phrenology, if there are such organs, has cor- 
rectly identified them ; whether or not the brain has convexities 
on its surface, or any other signs, answering generally to the 
external convexities of the cranium ; whether or not the same 
nervous fibres run between similar organs on opposite sides of 
the brain, or only between the two sides, merely indicating a 
unity of action between the two hemispheres as one organ 
rather than as made up of many organs ; and how the system 
is reconcilable with the irregularity which the surface of the 
brain presents on the different sides of the same head — these 
questions, elementary as they are to phrenology as a science, are 
yet unsettled. 

13. " Of all the organs of the body, the brain presents the 
least intimacy of connection between the results of dissection 
and the phenomena of disease. The most violent symptoms 
referable to this organ often exist during life ; and yet, on the 
most careful examination, after death, either no appreciable 
lesson, or none sufficient to account for the phenomena, can be 
detected. Whilst, on the other hand, many and most important 
changes are frequently discovered in both the brain and its mem- 
branes, in cases which betrayed either no cerebral disorder, or 
none calculated to excite suspicion during life of any organic 



196 MAN. 

change." * The truth is, saj^s Dr. Roget, that there Is not a sin- 
gle part of the encephalon which has not, in one case or other, 
been impaired, destroyed, or found defective, without any appa- 
rent change in the sensitive, hitellectual, or moral facuUies ; a 
statement confirmed by a large collection of cases made by Hal- 
ler, Ferrier, and others. Dr. Carpenter remarks on it as " a 
very curious circumstance, that the difference in the antero- 
posterior diameter, between the brain of man and that of the 
lower mammalia, principally arises from the shortness of the 
posterior lobes in the latter, these being seldom long enough to 
cover the cerebellum ; yet it is in these posterior lobes that the 
animal propensities are regarded by phrenologists as having 
their seat. On the other hand, the anterior lobes m which the in- 
tellectual faculties are considered as residing, bear in many ani- 
mals a much larger proportion to the whole bulk of the brain. 
Again, comparative anatomy and experiment alike sanction the 
conclusion, that the purely instinctive propensities have not 
their seat in the cerebrum." 

14. Indeed, physiology proves that the superiority of the 
brain as the means of mental manifestation depends not on its 
absolute size ; for the brain of the elephant and of some of the 
larger cetacea, is larger than that of man : nor on its propor- 
tional size as compared with the size of the entire body ; for 
the brain of the elephant is smaller in proportion to its body 
than that perhaps of any other quadruped, and yet few exceed 
the elephant in sagacity ; and, judged by this criterion, several 
even of the smaller birds must rank above man : nor on its 
inter-proportional size, comparing either the mutual proportions 
of its constituent parts, or of the whole of it with the nerves 
which it sends forth. For though it is only in this latter sense, 
according to Soemmering, that man can be said to have a larger 
brain than any other animal, tested by this standard the dog 
should rank in intelligence below the ox, the orang-outang be- 
low the porpoise, and the dolphin next to man. From all 
which it is to be inferred that, while the brain may have 
been placed by the Divine Creator in instrumental relation to 
the mind, and while the mental and moral superiority of man, 
physically considered, may depend on the distinctive peculiarity 
of his brain, that superiority is not to be regarded as measured 
by this cerebral distinction, any more than the amount of cere- 
bral activity is determined by the muscular instruments which 
it is the means of setting in motion. 

* Art. " Brain," in Dr. Copland's " Diet, of Practical Medicine." 



DEVELOPMENT. 197 

15. This conclusion affirms an essential distinction between 
mind and matter, and the grounds on which we have arrived at 
this conclusion prove the distinction. To the vulgar demand to 
see mind in order to believe in its existence, it might be suffi- 
cient to retort, Show us matter in order that we may credit its 
existence. And all that the materialist could reply would be, 
not that the hand touches it, or that the eye sees it, but that we 
touch it ^vith our hand and see it with our .eye ; in other words, 
that the brain feels and sensibly attests its existence. But the 
feeUng itself he cannot show us. No cerebral commotion he 
can exhibit is a conviction, no physical process a conclusion, a 
judgment, that a material object is lying before him. He is con- 
scious that an object is before him ; but vdio can see this act or 
state of his consciousness ? We believe it to be an act of the 
very essence, mind, whose existence he denies ; and regard liim, 
therefore, as presupposing and employing mind in the very act 
of disproving its reality, or as begging the question at issue. 

1 6. So also of those who argue analogically, as they suppose, 
and affirm that as the liver secretes bile, so the brain secretes 
thought, it is to be remarked, first, that they begin by assuming 
the brain to be a gland, and then infer the secretory character 
of thought, or by assuming thoughts to be secretions, and then 
infer the glandular structure of the brain ; in either case beg- 
ging the very premiss from which their conclusion is to be drawn. 
Secondly, the elementary particles in the blood, out of wliich 
bile is formed by the liver, can be pointed out ; unless, there- 
fore, the materiahst can point out in the brain the matter of hope, 
surprise, or doubt, he is chargeable with the self-inconsistency 
of ai'guing from the visible to the invisible. He professes to 
rely for proof on observation alone, and yet he is here inferring 
more than he sees, concluding from the known to the unknown. 
And, thirdly, the very mental act by which he thus generahzes 
the supposed functions of different organs, is of a nature for 
which nothing he observes in the brain can account. All that 
he observes are material phenomena, the act by which he gene- 
ralizes these isolated phenomena and gives them unity, is a 
phenomenon of which he becomes aware only by consciousness ; 
an act therefore lying entirely out of the range of his physiology, 
and not to be confounded with it, except by again begging the 
very question at issue. 

17. (1.) This last remark serves to introduce the first great 
distinction to which I would advert between matter, however or- 
ganized, and mind — the fact that the phenomena of matter are 

17* 



198 MAN. 

learned by outward observation, while those of mind are learned 
only by consciousness. " These two regions lie entirely without 
each other, so much so, that there is not a single fact known by 
consciousness which we could ever have learned by observation, 
and not a single fact known by observation of which we are ever 
conscious. A sensation, for example, is known simply by con- 
sciousness ; the material conditions of it, as seen in the organ 
and the nervous system, simply by observation. No one could 
ever see a sensation, or be conscious of the organic action; 
accordingly, the one fact belongs to psychology, the other to 
physiology."* Now the broad line of distinction between the two 
sciences here apparent, is the essential distinction between sub- 
ject and object. And hence it is that physiology itself as a 
science presupposes, and is indebted for its scientific form to, that 
conscious subject whose nature forbids it to be observed. Let 
the physiologist write down only what he sees, and he will find 
himself in possession merely of an assemblage of facts or ob- 
jects, without any internal relation or bond of union. Surely 
the power which classifies these separate materials, and unites 
them all into a single fact, is not itself connatural with the 
materials. 

18. (2.) The phenomena which observation brings to light 
are only instruments and organs, while consciousness reveals a 
force or cause. The only conception which I have of cause or 
power, I derive primarily from the exercise of my own will in 
moving some part of my body. In accomplishing such a move- 
ment, I am conscious (as stated in a previous chapter) of more 
than a mere sequence, of volition and personal eifort, and of an 
event as the result of the causal effort. And having thus gained 
our notion of causality from the consciousness of our own per- 
sonal effort, we transfer the notion to all the changes observable 
in matter. These changes or effects necessarily presuppose the 
cause which produces them. When, therefore, the material 
physiologist affirms that he has the same proof that the brain 
secretes thought as he has that the liver secretes bile, and that 
the stomach digests food, we have not only to remmd him of the 
threefold reply to this assumption already given, we hare now 
to add, in direct opposition to his statement, that the liver does 
not secrete, nor the stomach digest, any more than the eye sees, 
or the hand feels. To suppose that they do, is to confound con- 
dition with cause, the instrument mth the force which employs 



* " Morell's Hist, of Modem Philosophy," Vol. I. 406. 



o 



DEVELOPMENT. 199 

it. Organization is not the cause of life, but only its instrument, 
for life precedes it. The hand is not the cause of its own mo- 
tions, but only the organ of that spiritual force, the will ; and as 
an organized body is only the instrument of the hving principle 
which employs it, and the movement of the hand manifests the 
cause or power by which it is moved, so the action of the stom- 
ach, the mere place and organ of digestion, manifests a cause, 
of which digestion is the effect. 

The only difference in the two cases is, that in the movement 
of my hand I am conscious of being myself the cause, while in 
digestion and all those physical processes which proceed irre- 
spectively of my consciousness and will, the pervading activity 
of the gTeat Sustaining will is presupposed. TVherever there is 
movement there is power. When, therefore, the materiahst af- 
firms that thought results solely from the movement of the brain, 
he evades or overlooks the great question at issue, "Wliat moves 
the brain ? The movement itself is not power, but the effect 
of it. Gravitation itself is not power or force, but only the law, 
according to which the Mo^dng Force is pleased to regulate the 
movements of matter ; and hence it supposes, even in the eye of 
science, a primary impulse, at least. It is the aim of enlightened 
science to push its inquiries, in its several departments, until it 
has reached the point which touches, or is impressed by, that 
Prime spiritual force. It is the office of enlightened piety to 
acknowledge and adore that Force as a pervading Presence. 
In the voluntary movements of man's own ma,terial frame, con- 
sciousness gives him the proof of a spiritual power of his o-wn 
adequate to produce them ; and in all the processes of nature 
by which he is surrounded — instinctive, animate, and inanimate 
— reason gives him a Divine cause which pervades, as it once 
originated, the whole. 

19. (3.) All material properties and processes give us the 
idea of space, but nothing that we know of the properties and 
affections of the mind sustains any such spacial relations. We 
speak of matter as extended and divisible ; or as endowed with 
certain properties of attraction and repulsion, as occupying cer- 
tain portions of space, and capable of moving in it, so that its 
parts thereby assume different relative positions and configura- 
tions. And this description is as applicable to organized matter 
as it is to unorganized, and therefore, to the brain ; and hence 
we can speak of its form, its parts, its color, weight, and con- 
sistence. And if it should be proved to be a galvanic battery, 
we may be able to point the course which the subtle process 



200 MA17. 

takes, and the chemical changes -which it produces. But mind 
is the negation of all this, and resists every effort to be brought 
within the terms of such a description. To speak of the con- 
figuration of a hope, or of the infinite divisibility of a thought, 
of the angle of a doubt, or of the easterly direction of a fear, is 
felt to be utterly absurd. And the only satisfactory manner of 
accounting for this sense of absurdity is the conclusion that 
thought and feeling are not material products ; that mind is, in 
a material sense, unconditioned by space. " But neither can you 
speak of the top or bottom of a moving power, or of the vital 
principle." Admitted, we reply, and for the reason previously 
assigned, that these are properties of IMind. They ai'e effects. 
Matter is only employed by the Producing cause as the means 
of their manifestation. And this remark includes a reply to the 
further objection sometimes urged by the materialist, that as 
mind is related to matter, it is capable, like matter, of being lo- 
calized, and may, therefore, partake of the same nature. But 
this, again, is to assume the very point in dispute, by comparing 
a subjective relation with a material object. Like the vital 
principle, mind is related to matter ; but who can conceive of the 
top or bottom of a relation ? It will be time enough to consider 
further the subject of the localization of mind when philosophy 
has determined the nature of the relation of the Creating mind 
to matter, or even w^hen physiology has discovered the relation 
of life to organization. 

20. (4.) The material phrenologist can present us only with 
a plurality of cerebral organs ; but how does such multiplicity 
of parts consist with that unity and individuality of self of 
which every man is conscious ?* If something in common to 

* "But (says the materialist) a,planaria from our ponds maybe cut 
into ten pieces,' and each become a perfect ~animal; does he then acquire 
ten minds, or personalities ?" On the one hand, the spiritualist cannot be 
reasonably expected to admit a mere physiological curiosity as a grave 
set-off against a great fact of human consciousness ; nor, on the other, is 
the materialist, it is presumed, prepared to admit the alternative to ^yhich 
his use of the fact would seem to conduct him — namely, that in the pla- 
naria, both mind, and the means of mind, are vastly superior to the same 
in man, for the planarian method of mental multiplication (be mind v.'hat 
it may) is a distinction to which man cannot pretend. Doubtless the 
truth is, that mind, in the planaria, is such as barely suffices for instinctive 
animal motion ; and that it has no intelligent consciousness of identity 
about which any question can be justly raised. To speak of personality 
in such a connection is an abuse of language. And to attempt to argue 
from the mere power of instinctive emotion in a polype to the profouudest 
depths of man's consciousness, is no compliment to reason. Even h/e is 



o 



DEVELOPMENT. 201 

all the organs is supposed to unite them into one being, that 
unitive something is the very power in dispute ; especially, too, 
as that is the only power which makes itself to be felt, or of 
which we ai-e conscious. Or if the materialist, repudiating the 
theory of a plurality of organs, regards the entire brain as a 
single organ, of which thought is the function, the same question 
returns in a slightly altered form — what can that power be 
which, withholding the property of thought from every separate 
pailicle of the brain, imparts it to the whole ; and which, not- 
withstanding the greatest diversity among the sensations them- 
selves, imparts unity to the whole ? The only reply which 
satisfies the consciousness is, that the power sought for is that 
spiritual substance which I call myself, which cannot be numer- 
ically divided, nor be resolved into physical parts, and by which 
alone we gain the idea of perfect unity. 

21. (5.) Still stronger does the demand for this spiritual 
principle become when the constant change of the particles, of 
which the brain is composed, is contrasted with that feeling of 
personal identity of which we never cease to be conscious. It 
is no adequate reply to say^ that " all the properties of the body- 
remain the same through life," nor to say, that " if the face is 
marked with small-pox, the pits remain throughout life." For 
the question relates, not to the indestructibility either of proper- 
ties or of form, but to identity of substance. A true analogy is 
wanting. If it be said, further, that the particles which are 
passing away communicate to those by which they are succeed- 
ed, the impressions which external objects originally made on 
themselves, it should be sufficient to reply, that this is a process 
entirely unknown, both to physiology and to consciousness. 
But the very hypothesis itself calls back, and leaves unanswered, 
the ever-recurring difficulty, what that principle, unknown to 
physiology, can be, which is said to endow the departing parti- 
cles with this mysterious power. An appeal to reason assures 
us that the identical and indivisible oneness which w^e feel, as it 
is utterly foreign to matter, must be an attribute of a different 
substance. And consciousness, the only appropriate, and the 
ultimate authority here, affirms the decision, giving us to feel 
that the substance, which is I, will remain the same in the whole 
circuit of my being ; and that it is this feeling of personal iden- 
tity which makes me capable of rising to the conception of the 
essentially Immutable. 

QOt, in the same sense, divisible by ten in man. How is it divisible in the 
worm ? for it is a principle distinct from organization, and precedes it. 



202 MAN. 

22. (6.) Contrary to all our experience of what we know to 
be a material instrumentality, there is a power within us uncon- 
scious and incapable of fatigue. Certain exercises of the mind, 
such as continuous thought and emotion, induce exhaustion and 
weariness, for in these it employs an organization which requires 
rest. But the individual will is perfectly insusceptible of 
fatigue. In its volitions, the mind asserts its proper spirituality. 
As far as material help is concerned, the vv ill acts from itself. It 
discloses the fact, that in itself the mind is an energy, and 
the source of untiring energy. It soon exhausts the muscular 
system placed at its disposal, but only suspends its purposes 
while its wearied servant sleeps, to weary it out again in the 
execution of them when it awakes. Often it forbids thought, 
that the body may repose. And often it is impatient at the 
repose necessary, indignant that its servant should be so unlike 
itself. Obviously, this easily tired servant cannot be the cause 
of the untiring intelligent will. The will and it have, beyond 
a certain point, separate natures, pleasures, and ends ; and 
hence the indomitable will not unfrequently compels it to under- 
go privation and pain in its service, and even offers it up as a 
sacrifice. 

23. (7.) Man's expectation of immortality comes indirectly 
in confirmation of the spirituality of the soul. Its immaterial- 
ity, indeed, cannot be deduced directly from its immortality, 
except on the untenable supposition that spirit is inherently and 
absolutely indestructible. That the human spirit is naturally 
indestructible, as " the Father of spirits" has chosen to consti- 
tute it, we have already expressed our conviction. But we also 
believe that the spiritual nature might have been mortal, and 
the material, and therefore the animal, immortal, had it so 
pleased the Creating will. If, however, the doctrine of the 
soul's immortality be first accepted on independent grounds, it 
will surely be allowed that the idea of a spiritual principle, as 
the heir of that immortality, better accords with our views of 
such a state, than that of any mere material organization. • 
Here, too, is boundless scope for that personal identity which 
we have found to be one of the exponents of a spii'itual sub- 
stance. And here the ideas of accountability and of futu]-e 
retribution find a congenial place — phenomena which seem 
inexpHcable on the supposition of an assemblage of mere mar 
terial properties, for they imply, not only a deep consciousness 
of dependent existence, but also a nature kindred with that of 
the Infinite Spirit, and the possibility, if not the prospect, of 



O 



DEVELOPMENT. 203 

alliance witli it for ever. Our investigation, then, brings us to 
the conclusion, that matter and mind, as known to us bj their 
properties, are negations of each other, and that mind is an 
immatenal spiritual substance. 

24. Mind, we have seen, must be conceded, in some sense, 
to the animal creation, (though not, on thai account, inamortal- 
ity) ; and hence the question arises respecting those character- 
istics of the human mind bj which it is distinguished from, and 
proves its superiority to, the mind of the mere animal. In 
order to form an opinion on tliis subject, we must recur to the 
physiology of the nerves. We have seen that, besides the un- 
conscious nerves of hfe, or the sympathetic system of which we 
have not now to speak, there is the sensitive system, conducting 
to the brain, and also the motor system, proceeding from the 
brain to the muscular organs fitted for action. Now, the effect 
directly consequent on sensation is perception, a notice or 
knowledge of the object occasioning the sensation; and the 
effect consequent on perception is vohtion, or that mental act 
which immediately determines the motor nerves to muscular 
action. Here, then, is a circle of operations which apparently 
takes place whenever an animal acts in reference to external 
objects — sensation, perception, vohtion, muscular activity. But 
does this circle include the whole of the process belonging to the 
animal mind? In the human mind, one additional link, at 
least, intervenes between perception and vohtion. To this link 
we give the name, not of understanding, but of reason, by which 
we mean the power wliich the mind has of apprehending ulti- 
mate and necessary truth, of contemplating the ideal relations 
of things so as to be able to deduce universal truths from par- 
ticular appearances, preparatory to willing and determining in 
harmony with such tmths. So that the question to be decided 
may be put thus : — Is the volition of brutes determined without 
the intervention of reason ? For if it be, it follows that the vo- 
lition of the animal is constrained, and is therefore the expres- 
ion of a will in no proper sense free ; that the human mind, be- 
sides differing from the animal mind in degree up to a certain 
point, beyond that point differs from it also in kind ; and that 
the end wliich the human being is designed for may be expect- 
ed to correspond with his superior endowments. 

25. In stating the gi'ounds of our conviction that the animal 
vohtion is determined necessarily, and not by reason, it may 
conduce to clearness if we glance at the different classes of in- 
stinctive phenomena. By some, instinct and life are regarded 



204 MAN. 

as co-extensive. Such persons would denominate all the un- 
conscious motions of mere organic life, of the sympathetic 
nerves, as instinctive. These instincts might be called vital. 
Next come the adaptive, or those which call into action the 
muscles considered to be under the control of vohtion. Such 
are the beautiful and perfect nest-building of birds, and the 
mathematical cell-making of bees. These constitute the great 
class of actions, allowed on almost all hands to be strictly in- 
stinctive ; and whose direct tendency is to the continuance of 
animal existence. And yet, as far as the animal is promoting 
this object, it is evidently acting towards an end which is un- 
known to itself; and, therefore, acting blindly. Agreeably to 
Paley's definition of instinct, it is acting " prior to experience, 
and independent of instruction," and, we might add, acting with 
a perfection which no instruction could teach, and no experience 
improve. But thirdly, there are those actions whi«h appear to 
be the result of experience, and which discover a power of 
selecting means for proximate ends according to varying cir- 
cumstances ; these may be said to be mental. These are the 
phenomena which claim our attention ; for to this class belong 
those instances of animal sagacity, at the recital of which every 
one has been more or less interested. Now, even allowing, as 
we do, some mental act to intervene, in such cases, between 
perception and volition, our conviction is that such intermediate 
act or operation does not belong to reason. 

If the bird for example, on perceiving that the rising stream 
is approaching its half-finished nest, begins to build higher up 
the bank, it does but build on the spot where it would have 
placed its nest at first, had the waters then been as high as they 
have since become ; and the end in both cases is the same — 
the continuance of the species. Here is only an instance of 
the provisional operation of instinct. Again, actions are some- 
times related of animals, to which human sagacity would be 
unequal, simply because they afford no scope for reasoning. 
All such must be evidently referred either to an instinctive in- 
telligence, or (which would be proving to much) to the exercise of 
a reason superior to that of man. The same must be said of 
the power which some animals possess hereditarily of perform- 
ing certain remarkable feats. Knowledge, the result of expe- 
rience, is not transmissible in this way. The reasoning in such 
instances, if there were any, being destitute of data, could be 
nothing less than a profound train of a priori speculation. The 
most wonderful feats of animal sagacity, perhaps, are the result 



r^ 



DEVELOPMENT. 205 

of liumau instruction ; and merely evince the adaptiveness, 
within certain fixed and narrow Hmits, of the mental instinct. 
Even the plant has a confined power of adapting itself to cir- 
cumstances. Nor is there any ground to conclude that the su- 
perior adaptiveness of animal instinct is accompanied with any 
intelligent consciousness of its possession. 

26. Among the presumptive proofs against the rationality of 
brutes, it is, we think, justly alleged that their experience, con- 
fined at most within narrow limits, is incapable of accumulation 
and transmission ; that they practice nothing approaching to 
barter ; and especially, that they are destitute of the power of 
speech. To say that they have voices, or inarticulate language, 
adequate to the indication of certain appetites and passions, only 
increa*;es the force of this last reason, t or how unlikely is it 
that they would be endowed with the means of expressing 
animal feelings, and be denied the power of imparting ideas, 
eupposmg them to have ideas to impart. To say, again, that 
the animal is not entirely denied the organs of speech, still fur- 
ther serves our purpose. That some animals, especially birds, 
have at least imperfect organs of speech is evident, for they can 
be taught to speak ; and the only reason which can be assigned 
why they do not utter a single untaught sentence of their own 
is, that they have not a single thought to express. For " in a 
question respecting the possession of reason, the absence of all 
proof is tantamount to a proof of the contrary." 

27. But while these considerations impel us to the conclusion 
that, in the mental process of the animal, reason does not inter- 
vene between its perceptions and volitions, they forcibly indi- 
cate what may or does intervene — namely, the operation of 
appetites, passions, habits, and the passive memory or associa- 
tions of past impressions. To the expression of these alone, 
its sounds and signs are adequate ; and of these alone we be- 
lieve it to be conscious. As sensation issues in perception, 
perception awal^ens desire or attachment, aversion or anger, 
fear, or the operation of habit, or some past impression or 
mental association ; the influence of these again determine the 
vohtions necessarily, and determine them differently according 
as they act feebly or powerfully, singly or in combination ; 
while the vohtions, so determined, issue in corresponding mus- 
cular action.* The only will, properly speaking, which is here 

* The subject of animal instinct is considered at greater length in the 
" Pre- Adamite Earth." It was necessary, however, to give a condensed 

18 ' 



206 MAN. 

manifested is the Creating will in its divine appointments, ex- 
pressing themselves in laws of which the animal knows nothing, 
and over which it has no control ; and hence our treatment of 
it as irresponsible. 

28. We have now prepared the way for showing that the 
human mind differs from the animal mind partly in degree and 
partly in kind. The infant human being and the animal both 
appear to start from the same point of instinct ; both advance 
together across the line of sensational perception, into that 
sphere where the desires are excited, the passions gratified, 
where means are sought adapted to these ends, and where as- 
sociations of past impressions are formed unconsciously, and 
return unsought. But here their companionship terminates. 
Indeed, immediately on crossing this line the divergence begins. 
In the animal, the mind subserves the body; in the human 
being, the body is made to subserve the mind. He can re-flect. 
He can look at his desire, and question it. He, the subject, can 
become his o^vn object. He becomes conscious of desires 
which the wide world cannot gratify. For the animal, the point of 
starting is not more fixed than is its goal ; and only a few steps 
separate the two. But for the human being there is no goal ; 
before him stretches a prospect without a horizon. In that 
direction infinity lies, and all is open. 

29. Already, then, man has entered a domain where the 
faint and flickering light of the animal understanding is ecUpsed. 
All beyond and above is his own — "a path which no fowl 
knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen" — and he 
travels it alone. In the brightening ascent of mind, man leaves 
behind him whole classes of animals at every step ; till, having 
reached the sphere of the true reason, he finds himself not 
merely alone,' but enthroned, on a height. The inferior parts 
of his own nature are carried up with him. The appetites 
become virtues, and the social affections, religion. The loftiest 
summit of creation no longer ends in a machine, but in a will, 
whose freedom renders it a representative of the Divine will. 
Here too, the sacred domain of conscience is all his own, a 
realm of invisible Hfe, which draws its breath direct from 
heaven. And, here, instead of instinctive signs, and inarticulate 
sounds, words, the new messengers of thoughts and feehngs 
equally new, wing their way from soul to soul, and from earth 

view of it here, in order to be able to estimate the superiority of the 
human mind. 



O 



DEVELOPMENT. 207 

to heaven — partvS of the great hymn of language which is des- 
tined to receive additions from every age, and to reach its chorus 
in the Name of God. 

30. And the end which the human being is .designed to an- 
swer corresponds with his superior constitution. Here, again, 
our theory supphes us with the means of drawing the Hne which 
separates the animal from the human being. The animal has 
an end to answer, to preserve its own life and to perpetuate its 
kind. To the accomplishment of this end all its natural actions 
unconsciously tend ; for the end is proposed by the same Infi- 
nite intelligence as proposes ends for all the laws of nature. 
Even the limited adaptive power which it unknowingly exhibits 
is only the slightly diversified application ind perseverance of 
instinct in gaining its o^vn great end. Man shares with the 
animal in answering this end. But while it is the great and the 
only end with the animal, with man it is merely a medial end — 
means to an ultimate end immeasurably beyond. To the at- 
tainment of that end he can voluntarily subordinate and sanctify 
even his instincts ; while everything which leads directly to it, 
he enjoys alone. Though standing in the midst of mere nature 
he towers above it. As a free intelligence he is super-terres- 
trial, and can raise the earthly, infer the unknown, anticipate 
the future, and choose the ultimate. Instead of living only in 
the present, he can " look before and after," and consciously 
become the vital link of the two. Instead of gathering his en- 
joyments from the dust, he can erect himself, and reach for 
them to heaven. He has faculties for which he has no other 
use. Ascending from his appetites to a well-regulated self-love, 
he can rise to an all-embracing disinterested aifection, and 
thence to a lofty sense of duty which places him in emulation 
with celestial natures. " Like natures must have like enjoy- 
ments ;" and as his holy will is akin to the will of God, he aims 
at a like happiness ; aspires to live for the very same end as 
that for which God himself lives and reigns — the manifestation 
of the Divine glory. 

31. In proportion to the superiority of man's constitution, the 
resources of pre-existing nature were disclosed, and its relations 
advanced. In man himself, mdeed, all its great laws, mechan- 
ical, organic, and animal, were summed up, and attained per- 
fection. Art is not so much the representation of nature as of 
nature's design. And "man expresses the ultimate goal or 
purpose of nature's design." Accordingly, he appears on the 
earth as a being for whose coming all nature had been precon- 



208 MAN. 

figured. His ear only had been wanting to discover that its 
sounds were music. Classes of animals, since domesticated, 
had awaited his sway, and developed new qualities under it. 
He is their melior natura, the mediator for lower natures, and 
his influence over them a perpetual benediction. They look up 
to him, and he carries the look up to God. Everything now 
began to stand for something above itself. Literally, " truth 
sprang out of the earth." Nature was no longer an outside 
show. Its great symbolism had found an interpreter. Its ob- 
jects supplied the mind with images for ideal conceptions ; and 
forthwith passed into human language. Nature was indulged 
by man's presence, and exalted. Ordained " without hands," 
he was its minister and high-priest. The great temple in which 
he served was filled with emblems of the Divine Presence. As 
he walked to the altar, the proofs of goodness lay profusely in 
his path ; and the light by which he ministered was a symbol 
of purity. Nature had kept no sabbath ; but heavenly days 
were now to be intercalated ; and, through his lips, " everything 
that had breath was to praise the Lord." Providence no longer 
limits its cares to " the lilies of the field " or to " the fowls of the 
air ; " henceforth it charges itself with the well-being of a creature, 
" how much better than they ! " Even " Righteousness looks 
down from heaven ; " and descends to govern him. Physical 
laws are promoted into a moral discipline. The kingdoms of 
nature have, in a sense unknown before, become the kingdom 
of our God. Life has become a religion. " Lord, what is 
man ! Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor ! " 



CHAPTER VI. 

ACTIVITY. 

1. We regard it as a law of creation, " that everything man- 
ifests all that it is calculated to exhibit of the Divine Nature, 
by developing, or working out its own nature." A creation 
devoid of regulated activity would be no manifestation of an 
ever-hving and ever-active Creator. It is only by a universe 
of activity that He can be manifested to whose activity the uni- 
verse owes its existence. Still more may an active nature be 



O 



ACTIVITY. 209 

expected in that order of creatures whose distinction it is to be, 
that not only by them, but to tliem, the manifestation will be 
made. For such activity may be looked for in them if only 
to help them to understand, by sympathy, the same property 
in the Divine Nature. Accordingly, man is constituted a self- 
regulating force, pressing like the power of a spring on every 
resistance, and requiring unlimited time and s[)ace for the de- 
velopment of. his energies. Everything witjiin him and around 
him indicates that he is designed to occupy a spliere of activity 
which circumscribes, and indefinitely exceeds, every sphere of 
activity known to the prior creation. 

2. Every part of the bodily frame circulates more or less 
rapidly. " At every moment," says Licb'g, " with every expi- 
ration, parts of the body are removed, and are emitted into the 
atmosphere." The motion of any one part of the body involves 
the motion of every other part. The mechanism of certain 
parts admits of action more instantaneous than the quickest 
suggestion of the will. 

3. But man was made for voluntary external action. This 
is evident, on the one hand, from the fact that a state of inac- 
tivity is soon attended with a sense of uneasiness. Standing 
still quickly tires. Properly speaking, there is no standing 
still ; " the action of standmg, consists, in fact, of a series of 
small and imperceptible motions, by which the centre of gravity 
is perpetually shifted from one part of the base to another." 
Besides which, the mechanical properties of the living frame 
soon suffer deterioration, if they lie idle ; the power of the mus- 
cles diminish, and the strength of resistance in its bones and 
tendons degenerate. On the other hand, activity develops the 
physical structure, augments its power, and is attended, as the 
playful motions of the young of all animals show, with muscu- 
lar pleasure. * 

4. The appetites are regularly urging us to activity in order 
to their gi'atification. Mere sensations, or impressions from 
without, may be pleasurable ; but as if to prevent their ter- 
minating in themselves, or detaining us from activity, they re- 
quire to be frequently varied. "The continuance of an im- 
pression on any one organ, occasions it to fade." Let the eye 
look steadfastly on one object, and the image is soon lost. The 
senses themselves require to have their reports compared, and 
mutually corrected ; thus keeping the mind on the alert, and 
involving its activity. Perception, reflection, and reasoning, all 
suppose attention either to external or internal phenomena; 

18* 



210 MAN. 

and attention is the mind in an active state. We know only 
as we act. Our notions of time, space, and all their modifica- 
tions, involve a certain activity of mind. Activity is the con- 
dition of all knowledge. What, also, is the object of emotion, 
but action ? What is the office of volition, but to determine the 
direction our activity shall take ? What the design of con- 
science, but to indicate the course which it ought to take ? 

5. Let us pass from the constitution of man to • the constitu- 
tion of the world around him, and to which he is preconfigured. 
Here, we find, " all things full of labor ; " thus sympathizing 
with his own susceptibilities of activity, as well as inviting and 
inciting him to it. That sensibility to the varieties of temper- 
ature, which is seated in the skin, is, the physiologist informs 
us, a never-failing excitement to activity, and a constant source 
of enjoyment. Those objects which appeal to man's appetites, 
promise gratification only on the condition of his muscular exer- 
tion to appropriate them. A world of raw material surrounds 
him. Nature sells everything good, and effort is the price. 
As a social being, his affections are kept in constant play to 
provide for the safety, comfort, and well-being of their objects. 
As an intelligent being, the objects of knowledge lie around him 
in apparent disorder. If he would perceive, he must approach 
them ; if understand, he must compare them ; if reason, he 
must arrange and classify them ; if beheve, he must call for 
and examine the necessary evidence. The physical points him 
forwards to the metaphysical ; and from phenomena he finds 
himself beckoned onwards to the reaHty of ultimate facts. 
Every relation which he discovers, and every law which he ver- 
ifies, proclaims his patient activity, and is its precious fruit. 
Even his knowledge of duty is not a spontaneous growth, but 
comes to him as the result of consideration, and has to be 
guarded with jealous care. Wliile, as the subject of emotion, 
objects and events are constantly awakening fresh susceptibili- 
ties, and thus making him known to himself. 

6. The power of volition with which man is endowed is never 
allowed to rest ; for he finds himself constantly solicited by dif- 
ferent objects, or attempting to master the difficulties which He 
in his path. If the difficulty relate to an object of knowledge, 
spontaneously the mind tasks its power to pierce the obscurity. 
And this effort is " a concentration upon one point of forces 
before diffused." According to Spinoza, indeed, action is only 
another name for goodness, and passion for evil ; and the only 
difference between the good man and the bad is, that the former 



ACTIVIXr. 211 

has a greater power of action in him than the latter. But, re- 
jecting this extreme and one-sided view, it is unquestionable 
that this power is essential to virtue. Man is a cause, and is 
constantly acting under the conviction that, amidst all the exter- 
nal influences which surround him, he has the power of reaction 
and self-regulation. These opposing external agents are neces- 
sary in order to acquaint him with his own causative power, 
and to develop it. Even Fichte, while denying a material uni- 
verse, had to suppose an ideal objective, in order to afford a 
sphere of activity to the subjective. He admits that it is only 
by such means that we can " place before us, as object, the end 
and aim of our existence." On the faith of our consciousness, 
however, we find ourselves placed in the midst of a real object- 
ive. And in this external sphere, everything in turn appeals 
to Qur causative power, and challenges us to exercise it. Calls 
to vigilance, gratitude, and usefuhiess, appeal to our sense of 
obligation ; and make activity a duty, and a means of moral 
excellence. 

7. Without object or impulse, every part of our active nature 
would soon be lost to us, or rather, would never be known to 
us.- But with these, that active power is disclosed to us ; by 
exercise it is increased; difficult and occasional acts become 
easy and confirmed habits ; physical weakness is replaced by 
muscular strength ; ignorance by knowledge ; and a mere sense 
of duty grows into a course of intelligent and delighted obedi- 
ence. Thus, activity is a law of our nature, and the condition 
of its development. 

How impressively was this fact disclosed to the first man on 
the day of his creation. The fruits and luxuriance of paradise 
were not a dispensation from labor, but a call to it ; for there 
his Maker placed him " to till it, and to keep it." His intel- 
lectual powers were called into exercise by the task assigned 
him, to observe, compare, and give appropriate names to the 
animals ; while his moral nature probably received its first im- 
pulse, and was quickened into a state of activity, from which it 
has never since ceased, by the sovereign interdict of the proba- 
tionary tree. He was no sooner made, than every great part 
of his nature was put into motion by an appropriate impulse 
from the hand of God ; and in that activity he became conscious 
of his own faculties, and began to develop them. 

But if activity be thus a law of our nature, how hopeless is 
the task of some in aiming to combine happiness and inactivity ! 
How infatuated those who regard the enjoyment of the heavenly 



212 MAN. 

world as consisting in luxurious indolence ! The rest of heaven 
is a calm opposed, not to activity, but to suffering. Relative to 
the activity of "the living creatures," the many-winged and 
myriad-eyed symbols of the highest celestial life, it is said, that 
" they rest not." The perpetual striving after self-development, 
the struggle to bring into actual existence all that lies poten- 
tially in our nature, which here encounters so many obstacles, is 
there resumed, and resumed under advantages which are here 
unknown. Every step there is advance in the ever-present 
light of distant, yet approachable, perfection. Heaven is a 
state of greater enjoyment, and progress in excellence, than 
earth, partly because of its superior scope for activity. 



CHAPTER VII 



RELATIONS. 



1. We seem warranted to expect " that the process of the 
Divine disclosure into which man has come will be carried on 
by a system of means, or of medial relations." For, in no 
other way, as far as we know, can we be brought to conceive 
of the relation which the Creator himself sustains to his own 
creation. And, if the creation is designed to answer an end, 
it is only as every part of it sustains a relation to that end, and, 
therefore, to every other part — a relation of mutual dependence 
and influence — that the end can be attained. Now the com- 
plicated and universal activity of the human being discloses a 
system of relations, not merely equal to all the relations of the 
pre-existing creation, but indefinitely exceeding them. Abso- 
lute division or isolation is, here, impossible. Our attention no 
sooner fixes on a given faculty or function, than we find it to be 
an indivisible part of an all-related aggregate united in the 
integrity of the living man. 

2. Relations exist between the various parts of his physical, 
his organic, and his animal systems respectively, and between 
these three considered mutually and collectively. Each part is 
sympathetically and really united to the other two, nor can 
either of them act or suffer without the others being consen- 
taneously affected. A change in one part would render neces- 



O - 



RELATIONS. 213 

sary the re-construction of the whole. In our examination of 
his mental constitution, we found that his sentient nature is the 
consequence of a system of relations between his mind and 
the bodily organs and nervous apparatus assigned for its use ; 
while every sensation involves a corresponding perception. 
Reflection discloses a new world of purely mental relations, or 
between one state of mind and another. But though purely 
mental themselves, they owe their conscious existence to sen- 
tient and percipient states. Each power supposes a conse- 
quent; each susceptibility an antecedent. Reason brings to 
light a yet profounder system of relations, having necessary 
truth for their object. The laws of causation, successiveness, 
and resemblance, presuppose these ultimate relations, and de- 
pend on them by a logical necessity. Theory without induc- 
tion is a fancy ; induction or facts without theory, a useless un- 
connected mob of materials. If imagination retires within 
itself to think with closed senses, it is only as memory waits 
on it, and supplies it with materials, that it can select from 
them, and re-construct new events and worlds. Language, as 
we have seen, involves relations between the organs of voice 
and the nerves, which combine them in one simultaneous act — 
between these and the articulate sounds uttered — between 
these, again, and the mind which employs them as signs of 
separate internal conceptions — and between these conceptions, 
when combined, and the language which expresses that com- 
bination. Each of the innumerable emotions, by which the 
mind is kept in constant play, is related directly or indirectly 
to a mental state as the exciting cause. Every voHtion pre- 
supposes a motive, and, at the same time, sustains a relation to 
man's moral nature as a movement which ought, or ought not 
to be, while reflection gives him the perception of those rela- 
tions from which conscience receives its sense of obligation. 

3. So intimate is the union between the mind and the body, 
that a slight derangement of the latter will often impede the 
exercise of the former, or fill it with groundless apprehensions ; 
while grief, expectation, or profound attention, will render the 
body insensible to its ordinary wants. According to Liebig, 
every conception, every mental affection is followed by changes 
in the chemical natui-e of the secreted fluids. Form and fea- 
tures often impart a character to the mind, and a bias to the 
life ; on the other hand, the mental and moral character often 
impress themselves on some part of the outward form. Aristotle 
treated at some length on the shades of the hair, the form of the 



214 MAN. 

features, the complexion, and of the different parts of the body, 
as indicative of particular temperaments and mental character- 
istics. Indeed, it is on the assumption of the conformity between 
the soul and the body, that cheiromancy, physiognomy, and phre- 
nology, have, at different times, essayed to take the rank of 
sciences. And so intimate is the union of the moral nature of 
man with the other parts of his constitution, that conscience has 
been represented at different times as a modification of nearly 
every one of these parts ; duty has been based on considerations 
derived from each ; and ^drtue and utility, though essentially 
distinct, regarded as ultimately one. " The coincidence of mo- 
rality with individual interest is an important truth in ethics." 
Now these are only some of the more obvious relations existing 
between the continuous parts of his nature, yet no mind, except 
that of the Infinite, can comprehend the number which they 
potentially comprise. But each of these, again, is associated 
with all the rest by relations more subtle and complicated still, 
so thai no part can be touched, however Kghtly, but the whole 
being vibrates in sympathy. 

4. In addition to these, the human constitution exhibits rela- 
tions successively existent. We speak not now of the relation of 
generation to generation, nor even of that between parent and 
child, but of the connection between the successive periods of 
the same human being. By the faculty of memory he is enabled 
to retain the knowledge he has acquired, to recall former im- 
pressions, and to live the past over again. Every voluntary act 
tends to the formation of habit ; thus increasing his power of 
action for all the future. Every word uttered, every emotion 
cherished, alters the relation of the man's character for the whole 
of futurity. Even if it could be shown that some of his emo- 
tions and volitions pass from his memory never to be recovered, 
they do not pass from his character. They blend with his moral, 
if they escape from his intellectual nature. But it is more than 
probable — judging from well attested facts related of persons 
in fever and delirium — that the memory never loses entirely 
anything which has been once given into its charge ; that, in a 
certain state, it can give up, as from the dead, everything of 
which the mind had ever been conscious. Here is continuity 
of moral being of the highest order — continuity with accumu- 
lation. Not only is the last moment of his history connected 
with the first, his character of to-day is carried on to the account 
of his character of to-morrow ; so that liis character at the last 
is the sum of all the past. And thus he is at once adapted to 



RELATIONS. 215 

the progressiveness of the scheme into which he has come, and 
is a representative of it His own nature is a constitution — a 
system of self-relations — distinct from the constitution of things 
around it, though in entire accordance with it. 

5. Passing from man's relations to himself, we have to specify 
next some of his relations to the ohjective universe. " The hand 
of God," remarks lord Karnes, " is nowhere more visible than 
in the nice adjustment of our internal frame to our situation in 
this world." 

The period of man's creation was relative to the physical 
condition of the globe. Constituted as man now is, the condition 
of the earth during the earlier geological formations would have 
been incompatible with his continued existence. And as the 
first remains of races of animals now extinct reveal the prevail- 
ing condition of the earth at the time of their existence, so the 
commencement of the human race and the physical conditions 
of the globe were in strict co-relation. In a similar manner 
the different classes of animals which co-exist with him, are 
so many related parts of a great whole. 

6. The relations which man sustains to the atmosphere, and 
to everything of which the atmosphere is a medium, are innu- 
merable. The first impulse given to his lungs, and therefore the 
first moment of what may be called his independent life, depend 
on the air. The sensibility of his skin is related to the tem- 
perature. The agency of light is related to the production and 
to the taste of his food, to his activity, and consequently to his 
knowledge, his cheerfulness, and his moral character. Day and 
night alternate in his frame. The motion of the air maintains 
him in health. Electricity pervades him. And water, besides en- 
tering into his physical composition to a degree which imparts 
to it about three-fourths of the whole weight, is an indispensable 
element of his life. Equally manifold are man's relations to the 
mineral kingdom. Even the constitution of the atmosphere, 
just referred to, materially depends on it. The strength of his 
bones, and the power of his muscles, bear a proportion to the 
mass of the earth, as this again depends on its magnitude and 
density. The supply of some of his simplest wants depends on 
the distribution, and the relative proportions, of sea and land. 
The dark and central depths of the earth, where the lamp of the 
miner will never shed a ray, as well as the geological arrange- 
ment and physical character of some of the superficial strata, 
bear a relation to every step he takes, every breath he draws, 
and every comfort he enjoys. Hunger impels him to look abroad 



216 MAN* 

for food ; and the vegetable and animal kingdoms minister to the 
gratification of his appetite. As his powers are developed and 
his civilization advances, he multiplies his relations with every 
department of nature indefinitely. Discovery after discovery 
enlarges his horizon, and widens his domain. This part of the 
subject, however, belongs to the historical portion of our series. 

7. As man is a sentient being, he has organs which place 
him in percipient relations to all the objects of external nature. 
By the organ of touch, he is related especially to solid bodies ; 
by taste, to liquid ; by smell, to gaseous ; by hearing, to the at- 
mospheric medium ; and by sight, to objects beyond the region 
of the air — to the distant worlds of light. How exquisite the 
relation between the subject and the object — that light, for ex- 
ample, whether resulting from the movement of an elastic ether, 
or emanating from celestial bodies, at such vast distances " that 
thousands of years shall elapse during its progress to the earth, 
and yet that, impelled by a force equal to its transmission through 
this space, it should enter the eye, and strike upon the delicate 
nerve with no other effect than to produce vision !" And although 
the nature of the connection between the object presented in any 
given instance, and the sensation occasioned, is utterly inexph- 
cable, yet are they so indissolubly united that the knowledge of 
the object thus obtained is attended with an absolute conviction 
of its reality. The too ideal philosophy of a Schelling regards 
the subject and the object, the percipient and perceived, as even 
identical. While Hegel, proceeding yet a step further in his 
analysis, represents the only reality as the relation itself to which 
they both owe their existence. The bare possibiHty of such views 
denotes, at least, the perfection of the relation which combines 
together the subject and the object, and imparts a sublime idea 
of that Power which has thus wrought the worlds of matter and 
of mind into the unity of a single system. 

8. Man's reflective power places him in, at least, a twofold 
relation to the objective universe. By one of its laws, objects 
which have been present to his mind before, often recall, when 
they occur again, not merely the single objects with which they 
were formerly associated, but long trains and progressions of ^ 
thought. So that, besides the objective world of the present mo- 
ment, he is in effect attended by the worlds of the past Every 
day has its own objects and events which distinguish it from 
every other day ; every day, therefore, has its own world ; yet 
the mind retains its relation to each, takes them all on with it, 
and may thus virtually inhabit a number of worlds in quick sue- 



RELATIONS. 217 

cession. By another of its laws it sustains a very similar rela- 
tion to the future. The mind confidently expects the same 
sequences in the future which it has observed in the past. And 
this universal expectation of the subjective mind, is universally 
responded to by objective nature. " In the instinctive, the univer- 
sal faith of Nature's constancy," says Dr. Chalmers, "we behold 
a promise. In the actual constancy of Nature, Ave behold its 
fuhilment." God " hath not only enabled man to retain in his 
memory a faithful transcript of the past ; but, by means of this 
constitutional tendency, this instinct of the understanding, as it 
has been termed, to look with prophetic eye upon the future. 
It is the link by which we connect experience with anticipation." 

9. The relation of adjustment established between the reason 
of man, and the necessary truths embodied and implied in the 
external universe is equally apparent. In the mixed mathe- 
matics, the mind having ascended analytically from the obser- 
vation of external phenomena to general principles, can then 
retire into itself, and reason synthetically from these principles 
downwards to phenomena which it has never observed, but which 
subsequent observation will infallibly verify. In the pure mathe- 
matics, let the mind arrive by a single observation at the simplest 
conception of quantity or number, and then, shutting itself up in 
its own recesses, it can reason out a number of conclusions, to 
the truth of which external nature is found subsequently to re- 
spond. By observation alone, these conclusions would never 
have been arrived at ; how wonderful the relations, then, be- 
tween the mental and the material systems, that observation 
should subsequently verify these intellectual truths, though after 
the lapse of ages, it may be, and in the remotest parts of the 
material universe. 

In further illustration of the profound relation in which our 
intellectual processes stand to external nature, we might advert 
to the remarkable manner in which some natural object or inci- 
dental discovery is often found to be susceptible of extensive 
appHcation to the affairs of life. The discovery of the telescope, 
and the observation of the polarity of the magnet, are examples 
in point. So also " the chief use of the moon for man's imme- 
diate purposes remained unknown to him for five thousand 
years from his creation."* Every department of modern science 
exhibits illustrations of the complicated and remote correspon- 
dences between the objective system and the preconceptions of 

* Sir John Herschell's Discourse, p. 309. 
19 



218 MAN. 

the mind. Deduction and induction answer to each other. The 
arguments a. priori and a posteriori require each other. Each 
kind of truth asks for its own kind of evidence, though all evi- 
dence is ultimately related. A truth requiring, in order to its 
discovery, a degree of elaboration and abstraction of which few 
are capable, is often found when elicited to admit of a number 
of useful applications to which all are competent. 

10. The specific preferences which men show for different 
branches of knowledge, prove that, besides the general accord- 
ance existing between the subjective and the objective, there 
are special relations. All great works form a series. " One 
soweth, and another reapeth." Li this division of labor, indeed, 
the laborers may be inchned to depreciate each other's particu- 
lar pursuit ; but, when it is found that, without any preconcerted 
scheme, the hewn and sculptured stones which they have brought 
from their respective quarries only need to be put together in 
order to form a magnificent temple of the most harmonious pro- 
portions, w^hat a sublime view does it give us of the wisdom 
which, besides harmonizing the material with the material and 
the mental with the mental, includes the material and the men- 
tal creations in the harmony of one system. 

11. Imagination invests man wdth a kind of creative power. 
Besides discovering laws, he can himself body forth ideas ; and 
tliis world appears to be studiously adapted for awakening, de- 
veloping, and giving them objective existence. It is a world 
ali'eady replenished with symbols and representations of the Di- 
vine ideas — images of the beautiful, the proportionate, the 
graceful and the sublime ; and he feels that, so far from being 
strange and unkno\vn to him, they are the mirrored fonns of 
his own being. He might have been entirely destitute of the 
imaginative faculty, and then would a world of beauty have 
been unveiled to his eye in vain ; or else, though endowed with 
the power, the objects into the midst of which he came, might 
have presented more to repress than to stimulate the facult}\ 
But he is surrounded by objects every one of which appeals', 
suggests, and incites. Varied as they are, they are suggestive 
of greater variety stiU. The Divine Mind has not exhausted 
the ideal in creation, and man is invited to unfold it yet further, 
and to draw out some of its still hidden fonns. His art, indeed, 
is homogeneous with nature, but not limited by it. Multitudi- 
nous as the objects may be which appeal to his imagination, 
they do not distract nor depress. On the contrary, they enlarge 
the horizon of the mind, give it glimpses into other worids, and 



RELATIONS. 219 

dispose it to derive from thence additional creations. Nor, if 
the imagination is to have scope for its activity, must it be op- 
pressed by the inimitable perfection of external objects. Ac- 
cordingly, that perfection is of a nature to suggest an order of 
excellence beyond itself. Man can represent ideas which it 
would require a loftier state of being fully to reahze ; and can 
entertain himself with visions of majesty and beauty beyond his 
power to reveal. Nor, if any of his visions are to take external 
form, must he be placed in a world all of whose materials are 
either too rigid to receive it, or too fluid to retain it. Accord- 
ingly, the substances placed at man's disposal are of a nature to 
conspire with the harmonies and glories of creation to invite 
him to an exercise of his skill, and at the same time to teach 
him patience and humility while so employed. Comply with 
the laws of nature he must, even while emulating her beauties. 
But let him fall in with these, and he will find himself complet- 
ing the suggestions of the Creating Mind in carrying out his 
own ideas. Nor can it be thought the least important of the 
laws which the imagination brings to light, that the more suc- 
cessful it is in mediating between the world of ideas and the 
world of sense, the less satisfied it becomes with its own revela- 
tions, and the more earnest in its aspirations after an excellence 
which " eye hath not seen." 

12. Man's susceptibility of emotion gives rise to another sys- 
tem of relation between the subjective and the objective. Each 
sensibility within, has its own appropriate intonation in the 
world without. By a skilful combination of these sounds, a 
whole tale may be told to the feelings without the articulation 
of a word. To this part of our nature, all creation is vocal, 
often combining in a concert in which " everything that hath 
breath, praises the Lord." Similar are the relations traceable 
between our sensibilities and the objects of sight. " It is hardly 
possible to watch the night, and view the break of day, in a fine 
country, without being sensible that we have feelings, in sym- 
pathy with every successive change, from the first streak of light 
until the whole landscape is displayed in valleys, woods, and 
sparkling waters. The changes on the scene are not more 
rapid than the transitions of the feelings which attend them." 
And what a view does it open to man of his relation to all the 
past, when he reflects that the emotions which he experienced 
when last he looked on the face of nature, were connected with 
changes which took place in its formation an indefinite number 
of ages ago ! 



220 MAN. 

Regard whatever part of man's nature we may, we find it 
the centre of a large circle of objects acting upon it. As an 
intellectual being, all nature acts on him as if it v/ere a system 
of contrivances for the special design of engaging his attention, 
and educating his mind. As a social being, objects of affection 
throng around him, and keep his heart in constant activity. As 
a moral being, an object of a higher order reveals His relations 
to him, and moves the depths of his nature. " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thy- 
self," was the law of the heart before it was the law of Sinai ; a 
law evidently implying that every' object in the universe sus- 
tains a relation to us ; that the degree in which objects are to 
move us, or to engage our regard, is to be regulated by their 
value as a means of Divine manifestation ; that, as man ranks 
highest in this respect, he challenges our highest subordinate 
regard ; and that, by the same rule, the Being manifested, is to 
be loved supremely. Now, when we remember that through 
the whole of life our emotions are kept in constant play, and that 
every emotion has its counterpart object, what a system of rela- 
tions is disclosed to us \ But how fine, and exquisitely adjusted 
must these relations be when the great majority of the emotions 
excited are compatible with a state of mental tranquillity ! And 
how obvious and godlike their tendency when, according to that 
law of their operation we have noticed — that the greatest and 
the best should move us the most — the only effect would be 
that of constant assimilation to Infinite excellence, and closer 
relationship to Him ! 

13. On turning our attention to the voluntary part of man's 
nature, our view of the relations between the subjective and the 
objective becomes still more impressive. We have seen that, 
by one system of nerves, communication is kept up between the 
external world and the indweUing mind, and that, by another, 
the mind reacts and determines to muscular action. In this 
way, the spiritual will comes out into external nature, and lit- 
erally finds the world given into its hand. We have seen, also, 
that, for every object of perception, the mind has a correspond- 
ing emotion. And it is certain that the object contemplated 
excites the emotion whether we will or not ; and thus touches 
the springs of our character and conduct. But it is equally 
certain that, by the command which the will gives us over the 
attention, we can withdraw our contemplation from one object, 
and fix it on anotlier. We cannot determine what emotion an ob- 
ject shall excite in us ; but we can determine what object shall 



RELATIONS. 221 

engage oui* attention, and how much it shall engage our attention ; 
and thus vre become responsible for our feelings. We cannot 
determine what conviction any evidence shall produce in our 
minds ; but we can determine what attention we will give to it ; 
and thus we become responsible for our beliefs. At one time, 
we may be placed in visible relation to only a single object ; 
but, turning our regards from that, we may call for a thousand 
mental objects in rapid succession, and thus voluntarily put our- 
selves in emotional relation to them all. ^t another, mental 
objects may crowd into the view of the mind, but, to chase them 
all away, we may take into our hand some outward object, and, 
by fixing our attention upon it, determine the state of our minds. 
But, if we thus possess the power of choosing the objects which 
shall affect us, and the degree in which they shall affect us, how 
vitally important that our attention should be given to objects 
according to their importance in the scale of Divine manifesta- 
tion. That we do possess this power is implied in the law which 
we have already quoted — that we love God supremely. Se- 
lecting Him for the object of its chief contemplation, the mind 
will take the sublime impression of his character. The view 
of his goodness will excite gratitude ; thoughts of his holiness 
will produce veneration ; the sight of his judgment-throne will 
inspii'e awe. The subjective will be as is the view of the ob- 
jecti\'e. And thus by voluntarily putting itself into communi- 
cation with superior excellence, the world without not only 
evolves the world within into a state of manifestation, but leaves 
on it traces of its transforming and exalting influence. 

14. (1.) We have shown that in the very make of our moral 
constitution, virtue has a subjective world of its own ; but He 
who, in the language of the son of Sirach, " hath made all things 
double," hath placed in it vital connection with an objective 
arrangement, answering to it. A casual sight or sound, " the 
shaking of a leaf," may call forth from the depths of the con- 
science a loud and thrilling response. The poetic temperament 
recognizes the image of purity iii the lily, and of humility in 
the violet, and the reflection of one virtue or another in every 
object of nature. To express sentiments of gratitude and adora- 
ation, the musician calls forth and combines the richest and the 
loftiest sounds. To personify fortitude, wisdom, amiableness, 
justice, any of the virtues, the painter and the sculptor body 
forth the noblest forms and the highest order of physical beauty ; 
facts, which show that that is the true theory of Taste which 
derives it ultimately from morality ; and that He who has made 

19* 



222 MAN. 

both the subjective and the objective, has so harmonized moral 
and material lovehness, as to typify and express the idea that 
" the First Good and the First Fair " are one. 

15. (2.) If we ascend from material nature to social life, we 
shall find that there is not a virtue inscribed on the tablet of the 
conscience which society has not inscribed on its public tables, 
and for the exercise of which it does not loudly and constantly 
call. Compassion, truth, justice — these are enshrined within ; 
and society builds them temples without^ prepares them balances, 
or arms them with a sword, or erects for them thrones. 

16. (3.) But conscience has higher objective relations yet. 
Our moral nature has a moral world of its own without^ as much 
as our physical nature has an external physical world. The very 
fact that some have regarded virtue as entirely subjective, and 
some as entirely objective, furnishes strong presumptive evidence, 
at least, that there is a sense in which it is both, and that the two 
are intimately related. The truth is, that the existence of a 
subjective morality presupposes a corresponding objective mo- 
rality, quite as much as the body presupposes a world in harmony 
with it. The laws of conscience refer to a moral Lawgiver, 
just as the laws of matter refer to a physical Lawgiver. We 
have seen that for every intellectual faculty of man's nature, 
thei-e is scope for exercise in the world without ; and for every 
desire, a counterpart object. Nor does this parallelism fail in 
the case of man's moral nature. The authority within is felt to 
be related to sanctions on high. The reign in the breast is felt 
to be a part of a universal government ; and the pains and the 
pleasures which it involves, the foretastes of a righteous award 
yet to be made. And thus man feels himself related to the in- 
visible and the future, as well as to the visible and the present. 

17. Man himself is a part of the objective universe to his 
fellow-man, and the knowledge of the mind of another is like 
the reduplication of his own mental powers. But in order to 
attain this knowledge, a system of relations has to be estabhshed. 
All that we have described hitherto, together with the organs 
of speech, and the connection of these with the mind, is but 
preparatory to it. Answering to all these in the subjective, 
there must be objectively the aerial medium of sound, organs 
of hearing, a common understanding of the meaning of the 
language employed, and the same mental affections and intel- 
ligent belief, when acted on by the same causes. The vocal 
interchange of thoughts between two minds is the result of a 
comphcated system of profound relations. 



r\ 



RELATIONS. 223 

18. Regarding man's complex nature as a whole, the relation 
which comprehends and transcends every other is that of the 
creature to the Creator. First, it is that of an intelUgent being 
made capable of consciously perceiving his relationship. He 
sustains the relation of a Divinely originated being, and he 
knows it. Secondly, it is that of an emotional creature made 
capable of appreciating unlimited excellence, and the Being 
possessing and manifesting such excellence. Not only is He 
the fountain of aU the perfections disclosed in the wide creation, 
but from eternity there has dwelt in Him an ampHtude of glory 
which no creation can ever reflect. Now, that He should have 
fonned us capable of recognizing, not only the glory which He 
has revealed, but of being as much, or even more, affected by 
that which He has only suggested and afforded us ghmpses or, 
and of adoring Him on account of it, thii., we say, constitutes 
a second relation. A third relation is that which springs from 
man's voluntary nature, by which he can freely will to ohey God, 
to act hke Him, and with Him. By this means, he can not only 
admdi'e the perfections of God, he himself contains and reflects 
more of these perfections than all creation besides. Besides re- 
ceiving the Divine manifestation, he can consciously subserve 
and promote it. A fourth relation is that of a moral creature 
made capable of personally enjoying the proper result of all the 
prior relations. So that, without any original claim whatever, 
he sustains a relation to the hifinitely blessed God, which makes 
him capable of receiving, at every moment of his existence, the 
ever-enlarging results of the exercise of all the Divine perfec- 
tions. 

Now, during any moment of his life, the fii'st man could easily 
reahze the thought, that a short period before, he had no exist- 
ence ; that a comparatively short period before that, the material 
system to which he belongs had yet to begin to be ; that all the 
adaptations and relations between the different parts of his na- 
tui'e and the objective universe were originated, and derived 
their power of beneficially affecting him, entirely and directly 
from omnipotent goodness ; and that his distinctive capacity for 
knowing and loving, serving and enjoying, uncreated perfection 
was a pure gift from the same Sovereign source. Here, then, 
is a relation of which the essence is dependence — utter depend- 
ence on independent and all-providing goodness — a relation 
more intimate, profound, and entire, than it is in the power of 
the human mind adequately to comprehend. 

15. We have to regard man also as a being successively ex- 



224 MAN. 

istent. The relations which he sustains, when viewed in this 
light, maj be thus arranged : — Relations of property, or pos- 
sessory relations ; of humanity, or between man and man ; of 
family, or between husband and wife, parent and child, brother 
and sister, master and servant, family and family; of society, or 
between citizen and citizen, citizen and State ; of nations, or 
between society and society ; of religion, or between man and 
God ; these relations are named here for the sake of the con- 
nected view which they enable us to take of man's all-related 
position. The exposition of these relations, however, with the 
exception of the last, belongs to a subsequent part of the series. 

20. In the first moment of man's existence, God stood to him 
in the relation of his Creator ; but with the lapse of time — with 
the very next moment — the Creator added the new relation of 
his Preserver also. In quick succession, he may be said to 
have taken up the different parts of man's constitution, and to 
have significantly bound them to Himself. By preparing a place 
for man's reception, and storing it with selected fruits, man's 
dependence as a physical, organic, and sentient being was de- 
noted. By placing him in sexual relationship, his social depend- 
ence was made manifest. The knowledge di\dnely poured into 
his opening mind evinced the relation between his intellect and 
Grod. The law which prohibited a certain act, disclosed the 
vital relation of the human will to the Divine will, or that man 
was made to find perfection in obedience. By this special enact- 
ment the Creator and Preserver of the new-made man appeared 
in the additional capacity of his moral Governor, while the in- 
institution of the sabbath intimated the wants of man's spiritual 
nature by bringing him into conscious and special communion 
with God. Engaged in this sublime fellowship, man was to find, 
in the love and adoration of which he was made capable, the ufc- 
terness and happiness of his dependent relation, and an earnest 
of the grandeur of his destiny. 

21. Such are some of the comphcated and far-reaching relar 
tions which the first man sustained to th^e objective universe. 
The busy occupation of philosophy and science ever since has 
consisted in tracing them. Treatises, the most elaborate and 
voluminous, expound only a few of them. Man came into a 
universe of pre-existing relations ; a universe in which at every 
previous progressive stage these relations had been multiplying 
and compHcating indefinitely. He came to take them all up 
into his own nature. His mind was constructed on a plan rela- 
tive to the plan of the universe, in order that he might perceive 



r-\ 



RELATIONS. 225 

the rhythm of the whole. But the new powers requisite for this 
end still further complicated these lines of relation. Psychology 
was added to physiology. As the body is the medium through 
which the outer world gains access to the spirit, so also it is the 
instrument or mediator through which the spirit reacts, reaches 
the outer world, knows it, and impresses itself upon it. Science 
is directly conversant with the objective. Philosophy finds its 
elements in the subjective. But, without the objective, philoso- 
phy cannot take the fii'st step ; without the aid of the subjective, 
science is impossible. The ideas of philosophy, the laws of sci- 
ence, and the constructions of art, all proceed together. Every 
phenomenon is both an antecedent and a consequent, sustains 
different relations. So vital and perfect is this system of rela- 
tions, that whatever part or function of the human being engages 
our attention, we feel inclined to conclude that the whole has 
been adjusted for that particular point. Nor can any one de- 
partment of knowledge be properly arranged which does not 
provide for its relation to every other branch of knowledge. 

22. It hai'dly need be added that these relations are continue 
ous, never pausing from the first moment of man's existence. 
Indeed, it might be shown that if he lives to draw only a single 
breath, the record of that breath is written on the atmosphere 
itself in a manner never to be effaced. And, in the same man- 
ner, that subtle element becomes the tablet of every word he 
utters, and of every action he performs through hfe. His rela- 
tions are ever-changing. Like a traveller changing his rela- 
tions to the scenery through which he is passing at every step 
he takes, man takes up new relations to the objective universe 
through every momeht of life, relations which modify all those 
which he abeady sustains, and all which await him in the fu- 
ture. So also are they evei'-increasmg. As his powers are 
developed and advance towards maturity, the sphere of his 
knowledge enlarges, the objects which attract his attention mul- 
tiply ; the points, so to speak, at which the subjective and ob- 
jective touch, increase daily. He takes up new relations, with- 
out ever becoming entirely, and in every sense, divorced from 
any which he before sustained. And his relations are univer' 
sal. From the first hour of life, he is potentially an all-related 
being. Before he knows it, the capabilities of his nature pre- 
pare him for entering into relations with every department of 
the universe. But as those capabilities ai-e developed by ac- 
tivity, these relations become matters of consciousness. Look 
where he may, man finds himself in the centre of multitudinous 



226 aiAN. 

relations stretching away into infinity and eternity. On no one 
point can he lay his finger and positively affirm, Here ends 
one class of relations and begins another. Even his will is 
conditioned by motives, and owes its freedom to its harmonious 
relation with the Supreme will. Viewed in this relation, the 
arched heavens become a dome in which his lightest whis- 
per is repeated through all nature, and carrie4 in thunder to 
the throne of God ; and the wide earth a theatre in which his 
softest step alights on chords which vibrate through eternity. 

23. Among the reflections to which this view of man's rela- 
tions gives rise, one is, that every man must be, within certain 
limits, different from every other man ; and another, that the 
ways in which man's relationships may be disturbed must 
be indefinitely numerous ; and a tliird, that no one of these re- 
lationships can be affected without affecting all the rest. On 
these particulars we shall have hereafter to enlarge. 



CHAPTER VHI. 

ORDER. 

1. Man, then, is an all-related being in an all-related system. 
Another of our principles suggests the idea " that these laws of 
relation themselves do not come into operation simultaneously 
nor capriciously, but that as many of them as pre-existed take 
effect in the case of the individual man according to the order 
of their appearance in the great scheme of the Divine pro- 
cedure." For as by the law of continuity wdth progression, 
every law has come into operation in orderly succession, that 
order of succession is itself a law. And as laws operate uni- 
formly, for the same reason that they operate at all — namely, 
for the purpose of manifestation, the order of their introduction 
at first into the general system could not be dispensed with in 
any of the subsequent stages or parts of the manifestation, with- 
out defeating the design of their introduction at all. 

2. We have seen that the order in wliich the great physical 
laws came into operation is the mechanical, the chemical, &c. 
Now, as far as we can affirm anything on the subject, it would 
appeal" that in that process by which man subjects all-pre-exist- 



r\ 



ORDER. 227 

ing nature, as summed up in the animal which he devoui's, to 
his own nourishment, the same order prevails. His food, when 
broken down and prepared by certain mechanical operations, 
undergoes various chemical changes, and then presents an ap- 
pearance which has been aptly called animal crystalization, and 
is afterwards vitalized, and lastly animalized. 

3. Whether the order in which the different senses are de- 
veloped and matured is amenable to this law must remain unde- 
termined, owing to our unavoidable ignorance of the requisite 
data. It is, however, important to remark that they appear to 
be perfected in man in the order in which they are found in the 
ascending ranks of animal existence, and that this order is also 
the order of their importance to man as an intelligent being. 

4. The phenomena of intelligence exhibit the same orderly 
development. "All our knowledge begins with experience." 
The mind begins by experiencing a sensation, a sensation occa- 
sioned by that external world which preceded its own existence ; 
and from this source comes its first hint of knowledge. This 
is followed by perception, a spontaneous judgment of the 
mind by which the occasion of the sensation is referred to a 
cause external to it, to an objective world. Beliefs respecting 
the objective exist anterior to our reflection upon them. The 
mind's first communion is not with itself, but with things exter- 
nal to, and apart from, itself Its earliest movement is direct, 
not reflex. Next comes the reflective understanding — com- 
paring, abstracting, generalizing, and combining objects. 

5. The desire of knowledge is developed according to the 
order of our wants and necessities ; being confined, in the first 
instance, exclusively to those properties of material objects, and 
those laws of the material world, an "acquaintance with which 
is essential to the preservation of our animal existence." From 
this low level of phenomena, indeed, man rises to the contem- 
plation of realities ; passes the boundaries of the sensible into 
the region of the spiritual and the infinite. But his movement 
is ever in the order of progi-ess^or importance. The manifes- 
tation of his instinctive nature precedes that of his intelligent 
nature, and indications of his intelligent, appear earlier than 
those of his moral and spiritual nature. 

6. According to Hartley, as expounded by Mackintosh,* " the 
various principles of human action rise in value according to 
the order in which they spring up after each other. We can 
then only be in a state of as much enjoyment as we are evi- 

* Ethical Philosophy, 266. 



228 ' MAN. 

dently capable of attaining, when we prefer interest to the ori- 
ginal gratifications ; honor to interest ; the pleasures of imagi- 
nation to those of sense ; the dictates of conscience to pleasure, 
interest, or reputation ; the well-being of fellow-creatures to our 
own indulgences ; in a word, when we pursue moral good and 
social happiness chiefly and for their own sake." In Hartley's 
own language, " theopathy, or piety, although the last result of 
the purified and exalted sentiments, may at length swallow up 
every other principle and absorb the whole man." These views 
are objectionable inasmuch as they imply that one reason, at 
least, why so few men are pious is, not owing to any depravity 
of heart, but because piety, or theopathy, is " in the order of 
our progress, the last of the virtues ; " the " theopathic affection 
being naturally generated out of the preceding virtues." Ante- 
diluvian longevity must surely have afforded man time sufficient 
for attaining this last of the virtues ; and yet then, if ever, im- 
piety triumphed. Animadverting on these views of Hartley, 
as far as they relate to the nature and origin of piety. Dr. 
Wardlaw justly remarks,* " were not human nature in a fallen 
and apostate condition, a sense of God would enter the soul 
with the first dawn of reason. With the origin of piety, or 
with the means of its development, we have not now to do, but 
simply with the order of its manifestation. And, whether we 
regard man as fallen or unfallen, it is obvious that love to 
Grod could not enter the soul 'prior to the dawn of reason ; 
that the emotions which it involves are subsequent in the order 
of time to the knowledge of Him from which they take their 
rise. 

7. Taking the individual man, it is evident that conscience 
presupposes wUl, for it is only with voluntary actions and de- 
sires that conscience has to do. The will, again, presupposes 
emotion, for this is ever exciting to volition. And hence, doing 
a thing for its beneficial consequence, presupposes the power of 
doing it for its own sake, for how else would its consequence 
ever have been known ? Obligation is antecedent to all calcu- 
lation of consequences. Emotion supposes thought respecting 
the object which has led to the emotion. And thought points 
ultimately to some sensation from without as its occasion. In 
the order of nature, the objective precedes the subjective. And, 
regarding man in his practical relations, it will be found that his 
desires precede his dispositions, his inclination to appropriate, 
that is, precedes his readiness to distribute ; that the proprietary 

* Christian Ethics, 403. 



r\ 



ORDEU. 229 

or possessory feeling is anterior to that sense of duty v.'hicli 
prompts him to treat others as he expects to be treated by 
them. And even this sense of equity may exist as man now 
is, apart from every sentiment of piety towards God. We have 
seen, also, that external nature is the chronological antecedent 
to the mind — experience to reason. The argument a priori 
supposes an a posteriori postulate from Avhich to start. So also 
Divine Revelation presupposes natural religion. Like the re- 
vealing telescope, it presupposes the eye Avhich is to look 
through it. The truths which it discloses, however new, must 
harmonize with all pre-existing truth; and the evidence on 
which it claims to be believed, relies on man's capacity to weigh 
and appreciate it. For its reasonableness, it appeals to reason. 
8. Looking at the introduction of the human dispensation 
itself, the fact ought not here to be omitted that the inorganic, 
the organic, and the sentient stages of creation, took the order 
of pre-existing nature. According to the inspired historian, 
the earliest creative arrangements related to an abyss of waters, 
and then to the formation of land. These were followed by the 
introduction of vegetable life — grasses and trees. To this suc- 
ceeded sentient existence, in the order of fishes, water-fowl and 
land-animals. Now, in all these respects, this is the order of 
Palaeontology — the newly-named science, which treats of the 
beings that Hved in the early ages of the world.* Last of all, 
man, distinguished by a moral nature, was called into being. 
And, further, it is worthy of remark that an order corresponding 
with the order of nature in man's development, was observed in 
the primatry provision made for his well-being.. As a physical, 
organic, and sentient bemg, a place was first prepared for his 
reception, m which " grew every tree that is pleasant to the 
sight and good for food." Next, as an active and intelligent 
being, he was put " into the garden of Eden to dress and to 
keep it." His moral nature was next consulted in the prohibition 
which taught him that he was a subject of the Divme government. 
And thus the order of the great scheme of manifestation was in 
every way maintained. The Divine perfections appeared in the 
orderly procession of power, wisdom, goodness, and holiness* 

^ This order " is a corroboration, so far, of the Mosaic account of the 
Creation ; in which (it may be observed by the way) there are several 
points of coincidence with the results of modern scientific investigation, 
not a little remarkable if we are to view the narrative merely as tradi- 
tional record of high antiquity." From an Article on the Vestiges in the 
" Westminster Eeview." 

20 



MAN. 



CHAPTER IX. 



INFLUENCE. 



1. The law of influence may be thus expressed: "everything 
occupies a relation in the great system of means, and possesses 
a right in relation to everything else, according to its power of 
subserving the end ; or, everything brings in it, and with it, in 
its own capability of subserving the end, a reason why all other 
things should be influenced by it, a reason for the degree in 
which they should be influenced, and for the degree in which it, 
in its turn, should be influenced by everything else." For if 
every created thing necessarily expresses some property of the 
Divine Nature, if it possesses that resemblance on the condition 
of manifesting it in subserviency to the great end, and is placed 
in a system of relations in order that it might be able to make 
the manifestation, then everything will sustain an active and a 
passive relation, or will have a right to influence everything of 
inferior, and a susceptibility of being influenced by everything 
of superior, subserviency to the great end of the Divine mani- 
festation. 

2. In the pre-existing kingdoms of nature, this law univer- 
sally prevails. The forces of inorganic nature are found to be 
ranged according to their activity and energy, or their capa- 
bility of producing changes ; while the most powerful are them- 
selves susceptible of change. In the midst of this incessant 
play of physical forces, a new force appears; vegetable life, 
in an organized form, exercising the wonderful power of in- 
fluencing chemical action, and of thus preparing its own food, 
and securing its own growth. A higher order of existence 
next appears in the form of sentient being, and draws its sup- 
port, directly or indirectly, from vegetable life. Looking up 
the scale of creation, the highest order of being at any par- 
ticular time existing is to be regarded as the relative end of all 
the orders below it. This is its prerogative by right of the 
superior power which it possesses of answermg the great end 
of creation. Thus, the sentient kingdom, besides illustrating 
the Divine power and wisdom in common with the inorganic 
and the vegetable creations, displays the perfection of goodness 
in addition. But now a being superior to any mere sentient 
nature has come. Looking up the scale of creation, we behold 



INFLUENCE. 231 

its summit occupied by one capable of manifesting, not one or 
two perfections merely, but the very image of God. How 
great may we not expect to find his influence ! 

3. On inspecting his constitution, the first remarkable charac- 
teristic which arrests our attention is, that he has power over 
himself. His superiority of constitution is not produced by 
leaving out of his nature all pre-existing elements — by the 
creation of a being utterly new. He is a compendium of all 
that preceded him — physical, organic, and animal. And over 
this condensed form of the kingdoms of nature lodged in his 
own constitution, he is called to reign. To this end he is 
endowed with the mysterious power of observing himself, of 
analyzing his own nature, ascertaining its component parts, 
measuring the comparative strength of each, and of knowing 
and determining how to apply them. 

4. He is endowed with that mighty spiritual force, a free will. 
In the exercise of this regal power, he can command away the 
allurements of sense, hold in abeyance the lower propensities, 
and despise weariness, suffering, and death. He has the faculty 
of attention ; and by virtue of his Avill he can fix his eye on 
what object he pleases in the procession of his thoughts, and 
can dwell on it until it has shed a hue and an influence over his 
whole mind. He is capable of belief ; but whether or not he will 
attend to the probable evidence on which his belief of a moral 
truth should repose, is referred to his will. He has come to be 
the centre of this earthly system ; and, if he will, he can repro- 
duce parts of its plan in his own mind ; appropriate and revolve 
Divine thoughts ; and thus intellectually sympathize with the 
Infinite mind. As a being of imagination, he can regale him- 
self with the creations of ideal excellence, and excite himself to 
energy and daring by motives drawn from the invisible and the 
unknown. If he will, he can mentally call for objects which 
shall make his whole nature flame with emotion. While a sense 
of duty can add strength even to his will, and give to it the 
power of an elemental force. 

5. And the longer he lives, the greater his self-regulating 
power may become. In his efforts at self-development he dis- 
closes a spiritual energy unknown to all material nature, and 
which every effort tends to augment. The result is, a distinctive 
character. To this character everything henceforth ministers and 
adds consohdation. Works refresh and reinforce it. Memory 
selects for it congenial facts. Imagination surrounds it with a 
congenial atmosphere. Conscience clothes it with sacredness. 



232 MAN. 

Habit gives to it tlie stability and determination of a natural law. 
The man stands in awe of himself; looks into the dim future, 
and wonders to what mighty stature his nature Avill grow. That 
he is a cause, a distinct power, he feels, for every act of self- 
control demonstrates it. That he is a person, a moral agent, 
having ends of his own to accomplish, he is deeply conscious, 
for he feels that they are ever in progress. But where is the 
goal ? He can lay plans for eternity. His nature asks a bound- 
less future in which to expand ; and often will his far-reaching 
hope flash around that distant and unlimited horizon, and show 
him, as by momentary coruscations, the indefinite vastness of 
the realms which expect him. 

6. Such is the constitution of the being who came to take his 
place at the head of the creation. In recognition of his right, 
and in order to the development of his powers, the kingdoms 
of nature were at once given into his hands. He was made for 
the sovereignty. He could not, indeed, change the laws of 
nature ; but he could discover, combine, and arm himself with 
their powers. They were all ready to co-operate with him. 
He could not divest the objects of nature of their relative rights; 
but they were all ready to adjust and subordinate themselves to 
his superior right. By cultivation, he gave flavor to the fruit, 
and a new perfume to the flower. By domestication, he trained 
the noblest animals to his service, and yoked them to his car. 
The law had gone forth, "the fear of you and the dread of you 
shall be upon every beast of the earth ;" and everywhere the 
law took effect. Gradually he placed himself in actual relation 
to all things around him. He conformed himself to them, only 
that he might bend them to his own purpose. 

He is a moral being, an individual, complete in himself, and 
cannot allow himself to be absorbed in the undefined generality 
of nature. His constitution forbids it. His every voluntary 
act is an assertion of his individuality. It is this idea of his 
individuality which is ever present to his own mind as the 
spring of his activity. It is this which places him in friendly 
opposition to everything which is not himself, with an effort 
to attach it to himself, and to conform it to himself It is this 
which places him in hostile antagonism to every obstacle 
which impedes the proper assertion of his will, and renders 
him restless till it is subdued. He is not satisfied with being 
himself conscious of his own individuality. Nature must record 
it. He must have it acknowledged, a thing settled. This high 
prerogative of his must be imprinted on, and reflected from, 



r^ 



INFLUENCE. 233 

the external world. Property is simply the outward assertion 
of this inward consciousness. An individual himself, he essays 
to individualize other things, to detach them from their previous 
vague generality, to put some signature of his own upon them, 
and to make themjiis ow^n property. He must cultivate, fashion, 
produce, utter himself in acts which imprint themselves on 
objects. And the nobler his mind, the loftier the order of the 
proofs necessary to satisfy his own sense of his individuahty. 
He must see the garden of Eden itself improve under his hand. 
If he paint, it must be ideal forms. If he sculpture, the shape- 
less marble must burn as w^ith a god-like life within, a multi- 
plication or diffusion of his own existence. If he build, it must 
be a temple, the shrine at once of his own thoughts, and of the 
Deity. Others may purchase or inherit his works, still they can 
never pass from him — never cease to be his in a sense superior 
to that in which they can ever become another's — the memorial 
of his individuality, which w^ould make itself be heard, and could 
in no other way be adequately expressed. He and they are 
identified for all time. You cannot say, he and they. More 
properly, you point to them and say, there you see him. And 
the more completely he surrounds himself with his own works, 
multiplies his own likeness, the more is his individuality demon- 
strated to his own satisfaction. Were not his efforts constitution- 
ally Hmited, the tendency of his energy would be to establish 
himself in the earth as the sole fact, to be recognized as the 
only power. God has manifested Himself in him, and he labors 
to externalize himself in all nature. And in every high resolve, 
in every well-regulated endeavor, there takes place in the midst 
of nature that which raises and ennobles it, and which manifests 
at the same time both man and his Divine Maker. 

7. Still more apparent is man's influence on his fellow man. 
When we come to examine the constitution of society, we shall 
fiiid ourselves surrounded by an atmosphere of influence in 
which every element is in constant and vigorous action and re- 
action. Here, man speaks, and eloquence is born. He sings, 
and poetry melts and entrances. He desires, and art becomes 
his handmaid. He defines and resolves, and law reigns. He 
reasons, and philosophy ascends her throne. He unites his will 
with the will of his fellow men, and a world of his own appears. 
Here, every word projects an influence, and acquires a history. 
Every action draws after it a train of influence. Every relation 
sustained, is a line along which is unceasingly transmitted a 
vital influence. Every individual is a centre constantly radiating 
20* 



234 MAN. 

streams of moral influence. From the first moment of his 
active existence, his character goes on daily and hourly stream- 
ing with more than electric fluid, with a subtle, penetrating, 
element of moral influence. A power this which operates in- 
vohmtarily ; for though he can choose, in any given instance, 
what he will do, yet having done it, he cannot choose what in- 
fluence it shall have. It operates universally, never terminating 
on himself, but, extending t6 all within his circle, emanates from 
each of these again as from a fresh centre, and is thus transmit- 
ted on in silent, but certain effect, to the outermost circle of so- 
cial existence. It is indestructible ; not a particle is ever lost, 
but the whole of it, taken up into the general system, is always 
in operation somewhere. And the influence which thus blends 
and binds him 1ip with his race, invisible and impalpable as it is, 
is yet the mightiest element of society. 

8. Superior still is the influence which man possesses, both 
over himself and over others, in " having power with God " in 
prayer. This, indeed, is a power, not resulting from natural 
law, or from superior might, but graciously accorded by sove- 
reign Goodness. By placing himself in harmony with physical 
laws, he arms himself with their powers. By voluntarily con- 
forming himself to moral laws, he clothes himself with their 
sacredness. But by placing himself in harmonious and direct 
communication with God, he becomes a divine reality. As the 
magnet arranges itself with the pole, he places himself in a line 
with the Highest, and becomes a medium of the mightiest in- 
fluence. However influential other means may be, the amount 
of their influence is calculable, bearing a proportion to the 
power employed ; but prayer, by engaging a Divine power, sets 
aU calculation at defiance. But man's moral and spii'itual in- 
fluence will appear more conspicuously at the close of the next 
chapter. 

9. Man, however, while thus capable of influencing himself 
and every object around him, is himself influenced by the very 
objects which he affects. The earth and a gossamer mutually 
attract each other, in the proportion of the mass of the earth to 
the mass of the gossamer, but only in that proportion. The 
plant, while acting on the surrounding atmosphere, is also mod- 
ified by the properties which it changes. And the human char- 
acter is at once a constitution and a formation, a subjective 
power, both modifying and modified by objective influences. 
It is not to be supposed that his subordinating power, because it 
is supreme, is therefore absolute. When he sinks into barba- 



r~\ 



SUBORDINATION. ' 235 

rism, external nature tjTannizes over liim, just because lie him- 
self is then in an unnatural state. And in the case of every 
infant, the primary object of parental solicitude is to save it from 
climatic and other material influences. Xor does man ever 
attain an earthly condition in which he is entirely exempt from 
their power. For man to annihilate or absorb them is as im- 
possible as it is unnatural for him to be absorbed by them. The 
fiat which made man sovereign over the kingdoms of nature, 
recognized their claims, as well as proclaimed his power. Sov- 
ereign and subjects, supremacy and subordination, are terms 
which imply each other. 



CHAPTER X. 

SUBORDINATION. 

1. In harmony with the preceding law, we are led by 
another of our principles to expect " that everything subordi- 
nate in rank, though it may have been prior in its origin, will 
be subject to each higher object, or law, of creation." This is 
only saying, in effect, that in no case shall the means be put in 
the place of the end. 

2. This law of subordination applies to the different parts of 
the human constitution. The various parts of this constitution 
we have already designated ; have shown that they are all re- 
lated ; and that they observe an order of dependence and de- 
velopment. Now, whether we consider the great end for 
which the whole exists, the manifestation of God ; or the coin- 
cident, but subordinate end, the well-being of the creature, it 
it cannot be a matter of indifference which part of his constitu- 
tion is appointed or allowed to control the rest. No part, in- 
deed, is to be extinguished ; for each of its laws is, in one 
degree or another, essential to the well-being of the whole. 
But the ends to be answered by the whole, require the gradu- 
ated subordination of the parts, as much in the constitution of 
man as in the movements of the solar system. Now this sub- 
ordination exists. 

3. For example, in common with the mere animral, man is a 
creature of appetites and instinctive desires. And, were he 



236 MAN. 

nothing more, he would be innocent in abandoning himself to 
their gratification — in acting the brute. It is obvious, however, 
that they cannot be left uncontrolled without endangering him 
who indulges, and the objects which excite them. 

4. . Self-interest, or self-love, is a higher principle of action 
still. It is appetite, or passion, regulated by reason. Passion 
prompts to instant revenge ; self-love defers it till it can be 
more advantageously taken. Appetite impels the man to eat ; 
self-love directs him to eat only so as to conduce to his health 
and to his happiness upon the whole. Self-love, then, which 
is always looking beyond the present moment, and making its 
calculations for a longer or shorter period, requires the subordi- 
nation of the appetites and the passions which are impelling the 
man to immediate indulgence. But self-love itself requires sub- 
ordination ; for, as its name implies, its object is solely the pro- 
duction of our own happiness, not the happiness of others, nor 
the attainment of the great end. It must not, however, be con- 
founded with selfishness, which viciously seeks for gratification 
at the expense of the rights of others, or in objects which do 
not properly belong to us. 

5. The disinterested and social affections of our nature rank 
higher still. They hold self-love itself in subjection, and are 
superior to its personal calculations. Paley, indeed, has said, 
" I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and 
in intensity." " If we could use such a term without an unbe- 
coming disrespect towards a virtuous and useful writer (re- 
marks Dr. Whewell) this opinion might properly be called 
brutish, since it recognizes no differences between the pleasures 
of man and those of the lowest animals. If the pleasures of 
sense differ only in intensity and duration from the pleasures of 
filial and parental affection ; we ought to know how many days 
of luxurious living are equivalent to the pleasure of saving a 
father's life, . that we may decide rightly when these claims 
happen to come into competition." Every act of self-devotion 
recognizes the superior value of the benevolent affections, and 
the admiration which it excites is so much homage rendered 
to them. 

6. The principle to which supremacy is assigned in the 
human constitution is, as we have already seen, a sense of duty, 
or conscience, including, of course, that love to God which is 
inseparable from love to goodness for its own sake. To man's 
appetites and instinctive desires it is permitted to subordinate 
pre-existing laws and objects calculated to gratify them. But, 



SUBORDINATION. 237 

if unrestrained, their language is, We must be gratified to-day, 
even at the risk of being destroyed to-morrow. To his self-love 
it is given to subordinate his appetites. But, if uncontrolled, 
its language is, I know of no end greater than that of my own 
happiness. To the benevolent affections is accorded the right 
of subordinating self-love. But to conscience, as previously 
understood, is assigned the office of regulating all these prin- 
ciples of action ; so that our appetites shall not injuriously 
affect our own interests, nor our own interests prejudice those 
of others, nor these affect the claims of God ; but the whole be 
subordinated to an end greater than that of any created being. 
And while engaged in the exercise of its supremacy, its author- 
itative language is, " this ought, or this ought not to be." In 
accordance with these views, Butler represents the brute crea- 
tion as having various instincts and principles of action ; and 
as obeying these, according to the constitution of their body, 
and the objects around them. In acting according to these, 
brutes " act suitably to their whole nature." Man, too, " has 
various instincts and principles of action as brute creatures 
have ; " but he has also " several which brutes have not — par- 
ticularly conscience." " And this," he adds, " compared with 
the rest, as they all stand together in the nature of man, plainly 
bears upon it marks of authority over all the rest, and claims 
the absolute direction of them all, to allow or forbid their grati- 
fication." 

7. It would avail little for the attainment of the great end, 
that this law of subordination existed in the subjective man, if a 
corresponding arrangement did not exist in the objective uni- 
verse ; if each part of man's constitution, that is, had not its 
own world of motives ; and each of these worlds or classes of 
motives had not been invested with a value graduated according 
to their importance in the great system of Divine manifestation. 
Now this arrangement actually exists. 

8. The appetites have their objects. And, though they are 
not all on the same low level, yet, as a class, they place man in 
a relation to inferior natures, and are themselves as limited and 
perishable as the desires which they excite. Self-love selects 
its objects as the result of reflection ; and is consequently " man- 
ifestly superior to any mere propension." While the appetites 
seize the present, and are appeased, self-love measures the dis- 
tant, and visits the unseen. It weighs the whole of my happi- 
ness against the gratification of any single moment. It visits 
my future self; and, on the principle, that the longer I exist, 



238 MAN. 

the greater will be ray capacity for excellence and happiness, 
and that the whole of my happiness must be more important 
than any passing moment of it, it employs the present in the 
interests of that more important future. The benevolent affec- 
tions have their objects multiplied indefinitely. Self-love obeys 
the command, " Thou shalt love thyself" Benevolence is un- 
der the wider law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
In common with self-love, it contemplates the distant future ; 
but, forgetful of self, it opens its arms to embrace the interests 
of that vast whole, of which it forms a self-oblivious part 
"While conscience, having to recognize the rightness of objects, 
has an especial affinity for everything bearing the impress of 
the Divine will. The appetites, indeed, and self-love, and the 
benevolent affections, are as much Divinely-originated parts of 
our nature as conscience itself. And, therefore, it is, that con- 
science can unite with and sanction them, within their appointed 
limits ; or they can all act together. But regarding a man as 
acting on only one of these principles at a time, the force of con- 
science must be admitted to be more sacred and commanding 
than either of the others, in proportion to the loftier character 
of the sphere which belongs to it. 

9. Hence, though the same act may be performed from mo- 
tives drawn from each of these classes, there is no comparison 
between the rightful strength of the other motives, and of that 
drawn from the will and character of God. The sight of a 
piece of bread, for example, may awaken in a man the sensa- 
tion of hunger, and he may eat it simply to gratify his appetite. 
Or, though not hungry, he may take it, from a prudent self-love, 
as offered to him by one whom he is loth to disoblige, because 
he is looking to him for some future advantage. Or he may eat 
it as the means of strengthening himself for a journey under- 
taken for some neighborly purpose. Or he may partake of it 
preparatory to some great conflict in which the authority of God, 
and the paramount claims of rectitude, are at stake. Now, who 
does not perceive that these motives are drawn from an ascend- 
ing scale of importance ; and that the last, based on obligation^ 
is so much more authoritative than the others, that it ought to 
be obeyed, even though it were opposed by the combined force 
of the other three ? 

10. In harmony with these views, man exercises an influence 
over the mind of his fellow-man proportioned to the rank of the 
truth and of the faculty which he employs, and of the principle, 
and the intensity of the principle, by which he is actuated. 



r^ 



SUBORDINATION. 239 

Mere physical force effects little. The most exterminating per- 
secution defeats itself. Any apparent exception to this rule 
owes its existence to the force of pubKc opinion, and not to per- 
secution itself, and as such serves to illustrate the power of that 
opinion. The mightiest machinery is moved by mind. Every 
revolution was once a thought. The great changes of society 
are produced, not by laws, kings, or armies, as is generally sup- 
posed ; but by the operation of a power stronger than all these 
— a power which no fires can bum, no " armies destroy, but 
which is able itself to extinguish the one and to annihilate the 
other — the power of thought, opinion, principle. These are 
the true sovereigns of the world. By the constitution of the 
Divine plan, the empire of time has been given to them ; and 
all other forms of power are Only their CiCatures. In the do- 
main of mind, metaphysical ideas are supreme. Their power 
is not limited to the minds which conceive them. It extends 
next to the larger circle of minds which comprehend them. 
These popularize and diffuse them to a wider circle beyond. 
Thought propagates itself by a law of its own ; and in propor- 
tion as it loses its metaphysical or scientific form, it becomes a 
centre of feeling and force, and gains in its influence on the 
general mass. The debris of the mountain-range, though inac- 
cessible and useless in its Himalayan heights, when triturated 
and commingled by the streams which bear it down into the 
valleys, is destined to form the fertile plains on whose produce 
nations hve. While the earth was resounding with Alexander's 
exploits, Aristotle, his tutor, was silently achieving the mightier 
conquest of the human mind. The Macedonian empire was 
soon dismembered and extinct ; but the mental empire of the 
philosopher continued vigorous and entire for more than two 
thousand years, moulding opinions, affecting creeds, and indi- 
rectly guiding the popular intellect; nor is it anything like 
destroyed yet. 

11. It may be expected, however, that of all the thoughts or 
theories which move men, the mightiest will be those which 
partake of a moral nature. And it is so. A moral truth is 
greater than a throne, and subverts thrones. It has a throne 
of its own, " in the spirit and souls of men." Mighty is he to 
whom such a truth first comes, or by whom it first speaks — 
mightier than all men that have it not. Based on aU that is 
most profound and central in our nature, it di'aws to itself the 
whole depth and mass of our being. And as it enlists in its 
cause the spiritual and untiring part of our nature, it needs no 



240 MAKi 

pause, allows no truce, entails its quarrel from generation to 
generation. Hence religion is ever struggling for its right place 
and influence among a people where it has not yet obtained 
them ; and where it has, that place is found to be the centre and 
summit of power, where it becomes the bond of their unity and 
their strength. To the idea of God, society is ever unconsciously 
aiming to adjust itself, and to be assimilated. 

12. We have seen that man is actuated by principles differing 
in value and importance ; and we may expect, therefore, that 
his influence on others will be proportioned to the rank of his 
moving principle. Accordingly, we find that the man who 
surrenders himself to his animal appetites, passes on himself a 
sentence of isolation and insignificance ; and his fellow-men ratify 
the doom with averted face. Self-government is the primary 
condition of all relative influence ; and in proportion as a man 
displays this, even in the pursuit of his own interests, he rules 
the spirits of others. " Men will praise thee when thou doest 
well to thyself" The man who, under the force of a well-regu- 
lated self-love, keeps his eye steadily fixed on some point in the 
future, and tramples on every present obstacle in the way to it, 
influences those around him by his example at every step he 
takes. The benevolent affections tell more powerfully still. 
They surround a man with an atmosphere, which whoso breathes 
becomes like him. The open heart is a key to open other 
hearts. Compassion melts and warms the icy to its own tem- 
perature. Love begets love, and "is stronger than death." 
Actuated by these affections, a man goes out of himself only to 
find that others are coming to him. A sense of duty still further 
augments his power. The force of a higher will is then added 
to his own. He " cannot but speak the things which he has 
seen and heard." " Necessity is laid on him." He is an agent 
of heaven. Every great force enters into his character ; sin- 
cerity, which' all confide in ; self-denial, which makes room in 
his heart for God ; faith, which sees " horses and chariots of 
fire," and which can hourly remove a mountain ; and an energy 
which moves with face and step direct towards its object ; qual- 
ities which all hearts bow down before and reverence. 

13. When the being moved by such principles, proposes to 
himself a lofty end, he still further augments his power. He 
can, we have said, design for eternity. If the design which he 
sets before himself be coincident with the great designs of God, 
he assimilates his nature to the Divine nature, and shares in its 
greatness. A political necessity has sometimes compelled the 



O 



SUBORDINATION. 241 

vicious to identify themselves for a time with great interests ; 
and the effect has been to charm them temporarily from their 
degradation, and to raise them to an elevation of character which 
has shed a dignity on our species. But he who surrenders 
himself intelligently and voluntarily to a great object, lifts his 
whole nature at once and for ever. He no longer needs par- 
ticular rules and detailed prescriptions. He is a law to himself; 
rather, he is obeying all laws at once, without feeling that he is 
subjected to any. By aiming at the highest end, he carries with 
him the influence of every object and being, moving in the same 
direction. He is made free of the universe, and admitted into 
fellowship with all goodness. Time yields up to him her trea- 
sures, and eternity lends him her sanctions. Already he speaks 
as from the distant future. 

14. To be influential in the highest degree, a man must be 
not only actuated by the highest principles, and aim at the high- 
est end, he must be undivided and entire. Just so much friction 
as takes place in the internal working of a piece of machinery, 
is so much power lost to the application of the machine. Let it 
be supposed, then, that the man is internally united and self- 
possessed, that his principles and passions harmoniously combine, 
that no part of his nature is wanting, no part exercising a coun- 
ter-influence, that the whole man is bound and braced up as if 
devoted to the grand experiment of seeing how much a single 
human agent can effect : let it be supposed further, that this had 
become his fixed character, the growth and habit of years ; and 
that he had acquired it as the result of indomitable perseverance 
in a path filled with allurements to beguile, and with dangers to 
deter, and in such a man we have a combination of the noblest 
influences operating in the most intense degree. He himself 
may be unconscious of his power , but the evidence, even of 
this, would only add to it. He may be great enough to be mis- 
understood ; but his influence is not to be measured by moments 
or miles ; though disinherited of the present, he will possess the 
future. " Being dead, he will yet speak," speak as from heaven ; 
and even his enemies may come to think of his face " as it had 
been the face of an angeL" His weight is felt even where he 
is not intellectually comprehended. The fearful trust in him ; 
the doubting believe in him ; the evil secretly admire and stand 
in awe of him. His presence is felt like nature ; and the mul- 
titude open and make way for him, and then fall into his train. 
He belongs to the j)arty which has ever ruled the race ; and 
which has given to the world its sages, and martyrs, and heroes, 
21 



242 MAX. 

and benefactors ; men whose memoirs are traditional, to whom 
statues are erected, and whose names become titles. But sup- 
pose him in favorable circumstances, and among those bj whom 
he is appreciated and beloved, and his Hfe is a perpetual bene- 
faction, and a diffusion of real power. The mere forms of 
power humble themselves before him. Wealth and glitter are 
impoverished by his presence. Everything good tends to yield 
up its whole nature to him, and he imparts it to others. The 
last effort of his own power is, to bring them under " the power 
of the Highest." 

15. Now, it was as a being charged with intellectual and 
spiritual influence, and capable of exercising it, that man became 
the subject of moral government. That government did not 
create his superiority ; it only recognized his moral powers, and 
held him responsible for their proper exercise. He came into 
a grand scheme of things, all the objects of which were Divinely 
classified before he came. Here, the Providence which " feeds 
the young lions," notes the " falling sparrow," and " taketh care 
for oxen," had apportioned its regard according as its objects 
were of lesser or of " greater value ;" and this value was deter- 
mined according to the measure of the capacity which an object 
has to receive and to exhibit the proofs of the Creator's perfec- 
tions, and so to answer the end of creation. On this principle 
of classification it is that, on man's appearance, he was placed 
at the head of animated nature. He was " of more value" than 
all that preceded him, hot only as a being of greater capacity 
for exhibiting the proofs of the Divine care, but chiefly as being 
capable of the Divine government. A new aspect of the Divine 
character was now brought to light ; and man, as the being in 
whose nature it was to shine forth, took precedence of all that 
had gone before him, and passed into the higher sphere of moral 
government.. His powers enabled liim, to a certain extent, to 
be a providence to himself, and a governor of himself, and for 
this he was to be held responsible. Every faculty Mdthin him, 
estimated by the Divine scale of valuation, had a worth of its 
own ; and he was to appreciate and cultivate each accordingly. 
Every object Avithout him, according to the Divine classification, 
had its own place. No two, differing in character, occupied the 
same rank. For the same reason, therefore, that God is to be 
the object of his supreme regard, everything else is to be re- 
garded by him according to the nearness of its relation to Him. 
Every differing object in creation is calculated to affect him, and 
to affect him differently from every other object ; but still the 



O 



OBLIGATIO^^ 243 

gi-aduated principle, of which we are speaking, supplied the law 
by which he was to make the selection of objects under whose 
influence he would Uve ; he was to surrender himself up to 
them in jjroportion to their tendency to educate his own nature, 
to develop his powers of self-government, and thus to invest 
him with the greatest amomit of improving influence over 
others. The value of every act he performed, and of every 
habit he acquired, was to be estimated by the same rule ; from 
the movement which took him mto the immediate presence of 
the Deity to the lowliest duty of ordinary life. 

16. ibid as the race multiplied, the value and the place of 
every member of it was to be decided by the same test. In the 
eye of God's great principle of classification, no two human 
beings would stand in precisely the same subjective relation to 
Him, or exercise precisely the same kind and degree of hal- 
lowing influence upon others. He who approached nearest to 
the model of the Divine excellence would necessarily be the 
object of the greatest admiration. And as admiration leads, by 
a law of our nature, to imitation, men were to be always ad- 
vancing towards higher and higher degrees of perfection. Li- 
ferior excellence, being constantly drawn upwards by the strong 
moral attraction of that which was above it, a process of assim- 
ilation to the blessed God would have been constantly going 
on, which would have rendered earth a copy of heaven. The 
laws of influence and of subordination would have universally 
prevailed ; or every one would have occupied a relation in the 
great system of means, according to his power of subserving the 
ultimate end. 



CHAPTER XI. 



OBLIGATION. 



1. Relations give rise to obhgations. "Every human 
being exists under obhgations to promote the great end of his 
existence, commensurate with his relations." So that he is 
under at least as many obligations as are the relations which he 
sustains ; each of his obligations differs with the corresponding 
relation ; and every change or increase of the relations involves 
a change and increase of the obhgations. TVTiat, then, are his 
relations ? We have seen that he sustains relations of depen- 



244 >,L^. 

dence and influence, of order and subordination. All these he is 
bound to study, in order that he may know his obligations. He 
is endowed with intellect expressly that he may know them. 

2. Observing the same order as that in which we treated of 
man's relations, in the seventh chapter, we begin with the obli- 
gations which respect his constitution coexistently considered. 

There are relations between the various parts of his physical, 
his organic, and his animal s}^tems respectively ; and between 
these three systems mutually and collectively. Then, each of 
these relations, as far as he has the means of understanding it, 
or the power of influencing it, brings with it an obligation which 
requires him to preserve it in harmony with all the rest, ac- 
cording to its rank in the human constitution. He can neither 
dwarf nor develope either of these parts of his nature beyond a 
certain point, without injuriously affecting the claims of every 
other part, and proportionally unfitting himself for answering 
the end of his being. Much less can he, either by a slow pro- 
cess, or by a violent act, extinguish his life, without doing vio- 
lence to every law of obligation he is under. By such an act, 
he is virtually attempting to take himself out of the loftiest sys- 
tem of relations the universe can ever know ; to deface one of 
the most glorious representations of God the universe contains ; 
and is doing all he can to defeat the great end for which the 
universe exists. 

3. As a sentient being, endowed with intelligence, he is 
bound to do all he can, consistent with other things, for the pro- 
tection, activity, and well-being, of the organs and nervous ap- 
paratus placed at his disposal. The impressions received 
through the medium of one sense, are to be compared with, 
and corrected by, those received tlu'ough another, and the whole 
to be submitted to the judgment, and thus the organs of sense 
ai'e to be — .as, indeed, they must have been with the first man 
— always in a state of education. 

4. Man can reflect ; and, as such, he is under obligation to 
bend over, look in upon, and ascertain the properties and laws 
and ever- varying manifestations of that mental and moral world, 
unknown to external nature, which exists within him. He is 
to mark the distinction between thought and its products, be- 
tween the mind and the truths which the mind excogitates. He 
is to study the legitimate process of the mind in reasoning, or 
the logical connection traceable between one state of mind and 
another ; to mark the causes most likely to disturb that con- 
nection, and to avoid them ; and to observe that the truth of 



O 



OBLIGATION. 245 

his own consciousness is the condition of the possibiHty of all 
his knowledge. 

5. As a being of reason, he is bound to remark that every 
act of reasoning points to a fact out of himself, and in which it 
rests ; that the particular presupposes the universal ; the con- 
tingent, the necessary ; the subjective, the objective ; and that, 
in reference to these ultimate facts, his intellectual life is a con- 
tinual series of beliefs. To stop short of the perception of 
these ultimate facts, is to terminate a voyage in the middle of 
the Atlantic. By pursuing any truth either to its origin or its 
end, the mind logically arrives at the infinite — God. Hence 
the language of the Apostle, " because that which may be known 
of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them ; 
so that they are without excuse." 

6. Imagination imposes another obligation. Its sphere is the 
possible, and its office to create. If it exist in excess, man is 
in danger of surrounding himself with objects and worlds at 
variance with the interests of the present, of surrendering him- 
self to the ideal to the neglect of the actual. If it be deficient, 
another class of dangers are incurred ; the mind is liable to be 
so absorbed by the actual and the present, as to be insensible to 
the possible and the future, insensible even to those suggestions 
respecting the invisible to which the visible was intended to 
lead. Man is under obligation, therefore, to acquaint himself 
with the mediating faculty of his nature, and to direct, repress, 
or encourage it, according as its tendency and the measure of 
its activity may require. 

7. The power of employing language, with which man is 
endowed, increases his obligations. For although we are not 
now speaking of the use which he makes of it in his commu- 
nication with others, his obhgations respecting it are logically 
prior to his actual employment of it in speech. There is an 
internal discourse (sermo internus) as well as an external dis- 
course. Language is an instrument of thought, as well as a 
means of imparting our thoughts. And there is a tendency in 
words to become " incantations." " Like the Tartar's bow, they 
direct their attack backward on the intellect, whence they have 
had their origin." Or, if a man breathe the softest whisper in 
soliloquy, it reacts with certain effect upon himself. His own 
mind is a whispering-gallery in which the lightest utterance 
reverberates for ever. 

8. As a being capable of motives, he is bound to mark what 
part of his nature is most easily moved — his appetites, his self- 

21* 



246 MAN. 

love, his affections, or his sense of duty ; what view of an oh' 
ject most easily moves it ; and what the degree is to which it is 
moved. It is only in this way that he can become acquainted 
with that natural character imparted by physical temperament, 
which, however susceptible of modification and direction, always 
gives a complexion to the moral character of its possessor, and 
distinguishes him from every other human being. The dis- 
covery of the precise locality of the poles, would be as nothing 
to him, compared with the knowledge of his own character. 

9. Man is a voluntary being, and is bound to remember the 
high and solemn office of his will ; that to will is to act ; that 
his will is the executive power pf the kingdom within him. He 
is to mark its individual character, whether it be hasty or delib- 
erate in its decisions, feeble or energetic in carrying them into 
effect — that it may receive the appropriate treatment. 

10. But each vohtion sustains a relation to his conscience, 
as a movement which ought, or ought not, to be. Then he is 
bound, before he wills or resolves on an action, to be satisfied 
that it is morally right ; to pause if he even doubts respecting 
its rectitude ; to respect the softest whisper, the least move- 
ment, of conscience ; and thus to " make conscience " of every- 
thing. When he has performed it, he ought to examine the 
intention with which he acted ; to live in the salutary dread of 
violating conscience ; and thus to recognize its sacredness and 
supremacy. As he is a voluntary being, he is not to expect 
that conscience will speak in thunder and lightning except in 
extreme cases ; but is to act on the remembrance that the per- 
fection of conscience is that it speaks loud enough to be heard 
by the attentive ear, but not so loud as to affright or force the 
voluntary part of his nature. 

11. Not only does every part of man's nature bring with it 
a corresponding obUgation, but every moment in which it exists 
continues, and even increases, each of these obligations. His 
internal nature has a history no less than his external proceed- 
ings. Let it be conceived that each faculty and function of his 
intellectual constitution has been bestowed on him separately 
and in slow succession, and the profound interest which would 
have been attached to his internal history may be easily imag- 
ined. But that interest is not really less because they aU co- 
exist potentially from the first. For their actual awakening 
takes place gradually. They become adjusted and related to 
their proper objects in slow succession. And as this awakening 
of the internal relations is from the less to the greater, the change 



O 



OBLIGATION. 247 

of the man's obligations is from the less to the more numerous 
and imperative. It is impossible for him to do what he is 
bound to do in reference to the different parts of his constitu- 
tion, without becoming more and more capable of virtue ; and 
for this progressive capacity he is held responsible. He cannot 
legitimately exercise his intellectual powers, for instance, with- 
out obtaining an increase of knowledge : his memory retains 
the past ; his attention acquires a command over the present ; 
and habit facilitates his acquisition for the- future. He cannot 
rightly cultivate the emotional part of his nature, without find- 
ing himself increasingly moved by objects according to their real 
worth. The appropriate exercise of conscience, every time it 
is called into action, cannot fail to increase the promptitude and 
authority of its decisions. While the l.ahit of thus knowing, 
appreciating, and morally discriminating, which these voluntary 
acts tend to form, increases his means of improvement for all 
time to come. 

12. Besides this, the different parts of his nature are mutu- 
ally related and as their progressive enlargement depends on the 
harmonious combination of the whole, he is answerable for that. 
They range in a graduated scale in which each has its place, so 
that the lowest cannot be disparaged nor the highest overrated, 
without injury to the whole. At every moment of his existence, 
he is responsible for such a capacity for virtue as he would have 
acquired by the perfect cultivation, through every previous 
moment of his being, of all his powers in harmonious combina- 
tion ; such a capacity for virtue being the only capacity 
"adapted to the responsibilities of that particular moment." 
Mere sinlessness, even for a moment, is impossible. The nature 
of a moral being involves the necessity, at every moment, of 
actual compliance with every known claim of law, or else the 
actual refusal of such compliance. He is held responsible, 
from moment to moment, not merely for sinlessness, but also 
for all the positive excellence which it had been in his power to 
attain. " That is to say, under the present moral constitution, 
every man is justly held responsible, at every period of his ex- 
istence, for that degree of virtue of which he would have been 
capable, had he, from the first moment of his existence, im- 
proved his moral nature, in every respect, just as he ought to 
have done." * It can hardly be necessary to repeat, that, in 
order to justify this ever-increasing responsibility, man is sup- 

* Wayland's Moral Science, c. iii. \ 2. 



248 MAN. 

posed to be endowed with the intelligence necessary to perceive 
his relations, and with a moral nature for making him conscious 
of the corresponding obligations. 

13. But all those obligations answering to man's internal 
relations, presuppose the existence of a corresponding objective 
system. His relations to the external world require, for ex- 
ample, that, in order to the preservation of health, a certain 
portion of every day should be given to the reception of food, 
to the exercise of the nervous and muscular systems, and to 
rest ; for the preservation of health is essential to his answering 
the end of his existence. " Every one that striveth for the 
mastery is temperate in all things" — goes through the physical 
discipline necessary to attain the best condition for ensuring 
success. And even the attainment of a spiritual end will not 
exempt a man from the necessity of employing the appropriate 
physical means. 

14. If every organ of sense is improved by exercise, he is 
bound to seek that improvement. If each bears a special rela- 
tion to certain external properties and objects, on all these 
objects he is bound to exercise them. If the brain as well as 
the senses requires education in order to secure its best action, 
and if the condition of his physique operates in modifying the 
manifestations of his morale, he is bound to subject his nervous 
system to a certain degree of excitement, and thus gradually 
to conduct it to its highest powers of natural action. 

15. As a reflective being, capable of tracing the relations of 
external nature, he is bound to study the qualities of objects, 
and their relations of causation, succession, and resemblance, 
and his own relations to them ; to mark the analogy of each 
with all ; to trace the plan which comprehends and unites the 
whole ; to ascertain the best method or methods, of arriving at 
these results ; to observe that nothing can be studied entirely 
apart and in isolation from other things, wdthout erroneous 
conclusions ; to mark his o^vn position at the head of creation ; 
and to regard himself as placed there to learn the power, the 
wisdom, and the goodness of God which creation displays. 
" For the works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them 
that have pleasure therein ;" not that the pursuit of this divine 
knowledge is optional for those that have no pleasure therein. 
For, " because they regard not the works of the Lord, nor the 
operation of his hands, therefore shall he destroy them, and not 
build them up." 

16. As a creature endowed with reason, he is under obligation 



O 



OBLIGATION. 249 

to mark that different kinds of truth require different kinds of 
evidence, and that proof, as a process, is not universally 
necessary nor possible, owing to the subject, not to the object. 
He is bound to distinguish the truths of reason from those of 
induction ; truths necessary from those which are contingent ; 
truths without which the understanding could not take its first 
step, and induction would be impossible ; truths which the 
understanding presupposes in its every movement. He is to 
remark that he comes into a vast circle of pre-existing objective 
truth, — truth which he is preconfigured to recognize and 
believe, and on the instinctive belief of which his safety and 
welfare depend ; that ey en physically he is "saved by faith" in 
these truths, and that in this intuitive belief of objective truth 
consists the union of the subjective and the objective. 

17. As a rational being capable of articulate speech, he is 
bound to study the laws of language as the means of communi- 
cation with his fellow men. Words are " notionum tesserae," 
and he is under an obligation to call things by their right names, 
and to communicate nothing but what he believes to be truth. 
He is bound to acquaint himself with the laws of argumentation, 
or logic as an art, for the purpose of informing and convincing 
the judgment; of persuasion, or rhetoric, for the purpose of 
moving the passions ; of verbal evidence, or testimony, for the 
purpose of inducing belief and respect for authority ; as well as 
to observe that all evidence, not demonstrative, admits of 
degrees ; and to remember that every word he utters is a seed 
which germinates for eternity. 

18. He is susceptible of emotion, and, as such, h^ is bound to 
acquaint himself with all the phenomena calculated to move 
him ; to classify them according as they appeal to his passions, 
his self-love, his affections, or his conscience; to rank them 
according to their importance ; to yield himself most to the 
highest and the best ; and to carry out his emotions to their 
final objects in appropriate external action. That is to say, 
there is a state or affection of the mind appropriate to every 
external object, w^hich every object when brought before the 
mind is adapted to produce, and which every mind, when the 
object is before it, is susceptible of experiencing ; and a state 
or affection of the mind which every voluntary being, therefore, 
is bound to exhibit. The external action corresponding to that 
state of the mind may or may not be performed. If it cannot 
be perfoi-med, still the feeling was due to the objects, and the 
language of Scripture then is, " It was well that it was in thine 



250 MAN. 

heart." But even though the appropriate action be performed, 
if the corresponding feeHng be absent, the obligation is violated, 
for the action is performed from a wrong motive. Thus, when 
God enjoins certain actions — such, for example, as the imparta- 
tion of our substance to the needy — it is not that he requires 
the mere external act of almsgiving, for his word expressly 
declares, that though a man " bestow all his goods to feed the 
poor," yet " if he have not charity it profiteth him nothing." 
The meaning is, then, that there is a certain state of mind to- 
wards our indigent fellow-creatures which we are bound to 
cultivate, and which would certainly impel us to act for their 
relief. And the same view explains the fact that we are held 
responsible for the formation of our opinions and our belief, as 
well as for our outward conduct, and justifies the style of 
injunction and command in which the Bible imperatively de- 
mands this belief There is a state of the affections appropriate 
to every truth which can be brought before the mind, to every 
kind and degree of evidence by which its claim to our belief 
can be supported, and to every being that can present and en- 
force it. In commanding our belief of Divine revelation, we are 
suppose^ to have uniformly cultivated such a state of mind to- 
wards the infinite excellence of God as would produce a supreme 
regard for his will, as soon as ever the appropriate evidence of 
His will was laid before us. This state of mind we are bound 
to maintain. But if, failing to maintain it, we pass into a state of 
mind in which the convincing power of the appropriate evidence 
is lost, this, so far from excusing, aggravates the guilt of our 
unbelief 

19. But this supposes that man is able to direct, or, in some 
sense, to control his emotions. As a voluntary being, he pos- 
sesses this power. In saying that, as a sentient, reflective, ra- 
tional, and speaking being, he is placed in certain definite rela- 
tions to every object and event without him, his emotional nature 
is supposed ; for unless he had the capability of being moved 
by them, such relations would be impossible. And in saying that, 
as a being placed in these emotional relations to the objective 
universe, he is held responsible for maintaining them unimpaired, 
his voluntary nature is presupposed ; for, as his emotions follow 
his perceptions of objects necessarily, unless he had the power 
of directing his perceptions to objects, or of withdrawing it from 
them, responsibility for the consequent emotions and affections 
of his mind would be impossible. This volui. tary power we 
have shown that he possesses. Hence he is responsible for his 



O 



OBLIGATION. 251 

external conduct only as that conduct is the expression of the 
state of his mind, just because that state of mind depends on the 
attention given to certain objects, and that attention is voluntary. 

So also, he is responsible for his opinions, not directly, (for the 
same opinions may be adopted under the influence of very 
widely different feelings,) but only as they are significant of 
those dispositions which led to their adoption; just because 
those dispositions are, in the way which we have described, 
subjected to his will. In forming an opinion of an object there- 
fore — say of its size, color, and figure — he is bound to place 
himself at the right distance, and in the right position, for the 
examination. Would that this obligation were recognized in 
ethics as it is in physics ! In forming his estimate of character, 
say of the character of the infinitely blessed God — he is bound 
to regard it in its different relations and excellences, to place it 
in comparison with that of others, and so to keep it before his 
mind that he may be filled with holy admiration of it. And in 
adopting his views of the Gospel, he is bound not merely to 
weigh its divine evidences, but to bring to that exercise such 
predispositions for truth, and such susceptibilities of conviction, 
as could only result from having fulfilled every moral obligation 
through every preceding moment of life. In the conduct of his 
will, therefore, he is bound to acquaint himself with the whole 
range of his moral obligations ; and inasmuch as the wiU of 
God is in perfect harmony with eternal right, and is, as far 
as it has been made known, the expression of that right, he is 
bound to acquaint himself with all the manifestations of that 
will, and to keep his own in entire accordance with it. 

20. As a moral being, capable of recognizing all his relations, 
and aware that every relation involves an obhgation, he is bound 
to live under an habitual sense of duty, and especially of duty 
as enjoined on him hy the will of God, which is the exposition of 
His character. Duties would be due from one moral creature to 
another, even supposing them, if it be possible, to exist without 
a Creator. But (in the language of Dr. Wayland), " as every 
creature is the creature of God, He has made the duties which 
they owe to each other, a part of their duty to Him. The duties, 
therefore, which are required of us to our fellow creatures, are 
required of us under a twofold obligation, — First, that arising 
from our relation to God ; and, secondly, that arising from our 
relation to our fellows. And, hence, there is not a single act 
which we are under obligation to perform, which we are not also 
under obligation to perform from the principle of obedience to 



252 MAN. 

Grod. Thus the obligation to act religiously or piously, extends 
to the minutest action of our lives. And no action of any kind 
whatever can be, in -the full acceptation of the term, virtuous — 
that is, be entitled to the Divine commendation, which does not 
involve in its motives the temper of filial obedience to the Deity. 
And still more, as this obligation is infinitely superior to any 
other that can be conceived, an action performed from the force 
of any motive, to the omission of this superior obligation, fails, 
in infinitely the most important respect ; and must, by the whole 
amount of this deficiency, expose us to the condemnation of the 
law of God, whatever that condemnation may be." 

21. All this, of course, supposes the existence of a subjective 
morality and of an objective morality — of the laws of conscience 
within, and of a moral Lawgiver on high ; and it supposes also 
the relation of the two. In a preceding chapter, we have shown 
that these relations exist. God has made man capable of knowing 
JEs will, and has placed him in the midst of a system in which 
he is constantly solicited to inquire after him. Hence he is 
bound to watch for every intimation, however expressed, and to 
treasure up every fact, relative to the Divine will, which his 
powers and opportunities permit. God has made man capable 
of appreciating moral excellence, and has revealed himself as a 
being of unlimited power, and wisdom, and goodness, and holi- 
ness ; then man is under obligation, from the moment his mind 
perceives, or is capable of perceiving, this objective excellence, 
to love it with unlimited affection, or with affection limited only 
by the capacity of his nature. God has created man capable of 
voluntarily serving Him, and of promoting the great end of crea- 
tion, and has furnished him with the requisite laws to regulate 
his conduct. Then man is to obey them. His conscience is so 
configured to the relations of the system into which he is intro- 
duced, that there is not one of his voluntary movements which 
does not violate, or harmonize with, the constitution and course 
of external nature, and with his own relations to it. The whole 
world is a Sinai whence the great Lawgiver is perpetually issu- 
ing His commands. And God has made man capable of deriving 
happiness from every act of voluntary obedience, and represents 
Himself as glorified by it. In other words, God has been pleased 
to identify man's happiness with his own glory — the ultimate 
end of creation with man's proximate end, his own well-being. 
A supreme regard, then, for the will and character of God is, 
under such a constitution of things, the only principle of action 
suited to our nature. 



O 



OBLIGATION. 253 

22. For, as to ourselves, since each of all our actions is 
amenable to law, and since to each is appended results deter- 
mined by omnipotence, it is clear that our happiness can be 
secured only by the harmony of our conduct ^nth the law. 
And as we are voluntary beings, we cannot be happy unless ^ 
we act as we choose. Li order to our happiness, then, we must 
obey, and obey because we love or choose to obey. Perfect 
obedience to God, and obedience emanating from love, are, by 
the very make of our nature, essential to our happiness. As to 
others, we have seen that every man is endowed with the power 
of exercising considerable influence over others, for good or for 
evil. But this influence has a tendency to propagate itself in 
every chrection, and for ever. Evidently, then, it is of the first 
importance that it should be under the direction of Him who 
seeth the end from the beginning ; and man is under obligation 
to exercise only such influence, and in such a manner as He 
shall prescribe. As to the Divine Being, our relations to whom, 
as to the Being who has made us what we are, lay us under an 
unlimited obligation to obey Him. Even if we owed our exist- 
ence to another, we could not become acquainted with the infi- 
nite excellence of the blessed God, without being bomid to 
render it unlimited homage. But the fact that we owe our 
creation to Him, adds the strongest motive to the prior obliga- 
tion. Our obligation to love and obey him, then, is twofold, — 
first, as arising from His inherent excellence, or His character 
absolutely considered ; and, secondly, from His relative excel- 
lence, or conduct towards us. And such are his benevolent 
ai'rangements in this latter respect, that the veiy gratitude which 
His conduct demands, adds to our enjoyment, and still further 
increases our obligations. 

23. If man's co-existent relations oblige him to know and 
love to serve and enjoy God to the utmost, the obligation is 
continuous. The duty of any one moment is the duty of every 
moment. If there is no moment in which his relation to God 
terminates — in which he can say, for example, " during this 
moment I am entirely, and in every sense, independent of God" 
— there is no moment in which he is not under obligation to 
Grod. If there is no moment in which his dependence on God 
is less than absolute, there is none in which his obligation to 
God is not supreme. During every successive moment of his 
existence, his creation is, in efiect, repeated, so that whatever 
his obligation was, as creature to Creator, during the first 
moment of his being, that amount of obHgation has gone on 

22 



254 MAN. 

repeating itself' during every moment since. In fine, if there 
be no moment in which he is not receiving, to some extent, the 
resuhs of all the Divine perfections, and thus sustaining a 
relation to each and all of them ; and if there is not a moment 
in which God is not infinitely more excellent than all the uni- 
verse besides, then must his obligations to knoAv, love, serve, 
and enjoy God be continuous. 

24. His obligations are ever-increasing. How early they 
begin it is impossible to say. For though indications of moral 
character are early discoverable, these indications presuppose 
the character itself, and leave us ignorant how much earlier it 
begins to come into existence. But however early it may be, 
it is evident, that a^ from that moment our moral relations go 
on increasing without intermission, our obhgations go on increas- 
ing in precisely the same ratio. Every day finds us entirely 
dependent upon God, and adds to pre-existing obligations new 
ties arising from the new favors of the day. Every day brings 
with it additional opportunities of knowing and serving God, 
and the corresponding obligation to improve them. And the 
eifect of this improvement of them would be, that every day 
would leave us, as progressive beings, with an increased capacity 
for virtue, and consequently under a greater obligation to virtue. 
How palpable, then, is the error which teaches, in eifect, that 
incapacity for faith or obedience, even when produced by a 
man's own previous acts and habits, diminishes the obhgation 
to faith and obedience ; whereas, on the contrary, every man is 
bound to be always prepared to meet every Divine requirement 
with all that capacity for obedience which he would have pos- 
sessed had his capacity at each preceding moment been the 
ever-enlarging result of constant improvement to the utmost. 
Now as it is impossible for us to conceive that any limit can 
ever be placed to the relations in which we stand to God, it 
follows that no hmit can be assigned to the progress of man's 
capacity for excellence. He contains the elements of indefinite 
improvement. 

25. Man's obligations are ever varying. Not only do his 
relations change through every stage of life from less to greater, 
and, consequently, his obhgations change from less to more 
numerous and imperative, but his obhgations of to-day are 
modified by those of all the past, as these again will enter into 
and modify his obhgations for all the future. An obligation 
once incurred is never entirely, and in every sense, dissolved 
(such, for instance, as that arising from the bestowment of a 



O 



OBLIGATION. 255 

benefit subsequently withdrawn) ; but, after ceasing to exist in 
its original and specific form, continues in a general manner to 
enter into and strengthen every other obligation forever. 

26. His obligations are universal and unlimited. No part or 
property of his nature can be named which is not under obliga- 
tion, for no part or property can be named which is not related 
to the Divine NatuTc, and which has not been placed in that 
relation ultimately for the highest end. God is; and, as a 
creature of intellect, man is bound to know him. God loves ; 
and, as a creature of affection, man is bound to love Him su- 
premely, and to place all he has, as the gifts of Divine love, at 
his disposal. God wills ; and, as a voluntary creature, man is 
bound to will in harmony with Him. In all this God reveals 
Himself to man, and, in effect, addresses him ; and, as a crea- 
ture capable of speech, man is bound to respond — to " call 
upon his soul and all that is within him to bless His holy name." 
And when he has consecrated speech, property, influence, his 
all, by his own voluntary act, to the glory of God, and has pre- 
sented himself as a living sacrifice, he has only performed a 
reasonable service. He is still an unprofitable servant, and has 
only done what it was his duty to do. To exceed his obhgations 
is impossible. 

27. From which it follows, that if man fail in duty in any 
respect, he can never supply the deficiency by any amount of 
subsequent obedience ; for the utmost amount of obedience he 
can render would have been due at every subsequent moment, 
even if no such previous deficiency had occurred. And this 
alone shows the remediless nature of disobedience under a 
system in which universal and unHmited obedience is at every 
moment due. But this is not all ; for while no act of obedience 
can exercise a compensative effect retrospectively, disobedience 
can and does project a disqualifpng influence on a man's future 
conduct. Sin impairs the moral nature. Each failure has a 
tendency to repeat itself, and to render him less capable of 
virtue, forever after. What, then, it might have been said on 
the creation of the first man — what if a wrong affection, or an 
act of violated duty, and a tendency to perpetuate the violation, 
should obtain in an early stage of his history ! Who can foresee 
the tremendous consequences? What if the evil thus early 
introduced into the constitution of the first man should propagate 
itself, generation after generation, through all his posterity ! 
Either the race will reach a point in which it will render its 
own progress impossible, or else a remedial process will be 



256 MAN. 

indispensable. And, looking at the extent of man's obligation, 
or at the innumerable points at which duty may possibly be 
violated, who must not have anxiously awaited the result of his 
probation ! 

28. From this survey of human obligation, we see also that 
the cultivation of a devotional spirit, and the habit of prayer, 
and the stated worship of God, would have been the duty of 
the first man, even apart from all direct or verbal intimation 
from God to that effect. The system into which he had been 
brought was entirely dependent upon God, and expressive of 
certain perfections of the Divine nature ; and a devout state of 
mind is simply the intellectual recognition of this fact with the 
accompanying moral emotions. Man himself, with his capacity 
for knowing and loving, serving and enjoying God, sustains the 
same relations of entire dependence on God ; and a devotional 
temper consists simply in having this fact present in the con- 
sciousness. But such is the constitution of our nature, that the 
continuance and growth of a devotional spirit depend, like any 
other temper of mind, on its utterance or appropriate outward 
expression. Now, prayer is one of the means for evincing its 
existence, and promoting its increase. If man is dependent on 
God and under obligation to him, prayer is simply the recogni- 
tion and avowal of the fact, and must therefore form a part of 
his obligation. If man is so constituted that he cannot commune 
with excellence, and admire it, without being assimilated to it, 
and thus having his capacity for excellence increased, then 
prayer is a duty, for it brings man into ennobling communion 
with infinite excellence ; and the highest possible increase in 
moral excellence is a part of man's obligation. If a Divine 
intimation be given that such communion with the Deity shall 
be positively rewarded with direct impartations over and above 
its natural or constitutional results, the obhgation to prayer is 
still further increased. And if, beyond this, the Divine will 
should distinctly appoint a place, or a time, or both, for man's 
more special worship, his obligation to "draw near to God," 
would be greater than ever ; and each act of obedience to this 
appointment, would cultivate the spirit, and confirm the habit, 
of obedience, and thus increase his capacity for it for all the 
future. Such were the obligations of unfallen man to the wor- 
ship of God ; arising from the constitution of his nature, from 
the appointment of a sabbath, and probably from certain oral 
intimations of the Divine will. 

Experience has shown, indeed, that these obligations, great 



O 



OBLIGATION. 257 

as they are, -were susceptible of increase; and man himself 
might possibly have conjectured it. What (he might have said) 
if it should ever come to pass that man should violate his obli- 
gation, and need a special intervention of God to save him from 
self-inflicted ruin ; and what if God should, in some Avaj, gra- 
ciously interpose for his rescue ; here would be a new relation 
established between God and man, and a new obligation resulting 
of surpassing cogency. This possibility, we know, has become 
a reality. And penitence is the feeling which springs from the 
perception of violated obligation. And prayer now includes the 
new elements of deprecation, and gratitude for deliverance, and 
rests on obligations unknown to innocent man. 

29. In relation to primitive man, then, the law of obligation 
is clear. Every created thing necessarily expresses something 
of the Divine Nature. It receives existence on the condition 
of manifesting that resemblance, and thus contributing towards 
the great end of creation. It is placed in a system of relation 
to other things and beings in order that such manifestation might 
be possible. So that every relation has its corresponding obli- 
gation ; and, therefore, the first man, as well as each of all his 
posterity, exists under an obligation to promote the great end 
of creation commensurate with his means and relations. 

If the question be still asked. Why is such obedience due ? 
or, what is the ground of this obligation ? I must refer to the 
answer implied in the preceding paragraph, and which is involved 
in the whole of our theory — namely, that, while the ground of 
moral obligation consists, proximately, of the purpose or will of 
God, it consists ultimately of that great Reason on which that 
will itself is based. For unless it be absurdly supposed that 
the will which determined the present condition of things acted 
without reason, then, the reason which led to it, and of which 
the Di\ine will itself is the expression, is the ultimate basis of 
the existing constitution of moral obligation. And, then, as the 
actual reason of that obligation must have been, an original and 
necessary diiFerence in the actions and dispositions required, 
from their opposites, or an intrinsic propriety and excellence in 
them, it follows that the reason of the obligation is eternal and 
immutable. And if the reason be unchangeable, then the obli- 
gation which rests on it must be unchangeable. also. That is, it 
is the necessary and unalterable duty of every accountable being 
to be perfectly conformed to all the relations in which he has 
been placed. So that virtue, or holiness, which is virtue in its 
highest and most comprehensive meaning, is, as it regards man, 

22* 



258 MAN. 

the entire accordance of liis affections and actions with all the 
relations in which he has been placed, of which accordance the 
perfect will of Grod is the rule, and the intrinsic excellence of 
hoUness as summed up in the unlimited perfection of the Divine 
Nature, is the primary and ultimate ground or reason. Beauti- 
fully and truly has Hooker said,* " Of Law there can be no 
less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her 
voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and 
earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the 
greatest as not exempted from her power ; boMi angels and men, 
and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different 
sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, admiring her as 
the mother of their peace and joy." 



CHAPTER Xn. 

UNIFORMITY; OR, GENERAL LAWS. 

1. The subject of the preceding chapter — Obligation — pre- 
supposes the operation of general laws. For, apart from the 
uniformity arising from the existence and maintenance of even 
physical laws, there could be no happiness, no safety, to the 
creature ; and, consequently, nothing could ever be known of 
the perfections of the Creator, nor could man be under obliga- 
tion to obey Him. 

2. Now we have seen that such laws have existed from the 
beginning. The plant had a constitution suited to the pre-es- 
tablished constitution of the material universe ; and its growth 
depended oh the harmonious co-operation of its own laws with 
the laws of that pre-existing economy. The animal had a 
constitution given to it suited to the laws of the pre-existing 
universe, including the vegetable kingdom ; and its well-being 
depended on its constant conformity to these pre-existing laws. 
And in relation to the constitution of that universe into which it 
was introduced, its every motion was physically right or wrong ; 
and, as a consequence, was beneficial or injurious to itself. K 
an animal, for example, ventured to the side of a chff where its 

* Eccles. Polity, B. I., § 10, 



O 



UNIFORMITY. 259 

foot was not adapted to sustain it, and fell, it had placed itself 
in a wrong relation to the law of gravitation, and it suffered the 
consequence of violating that law. That is, there was a right 
kind of place for it in creation ; and it was under physical obli- 
gation or necessity to remain there. 

3. Let it not be supposed that I am claiming for the laws of 
the physical Avorld the same necessary and immutable basis as 
for the laws of the moral constitution. The laws of nature are 
not to be confounded with causes. There can be no laws of a 
thing until the thing itself is caused, or made. They pre- 
suppose such causes, or volitions, of which they are the effects 
or manifestations. In other words, they are the rules by which 
God is pleased to regulate the phenomena of nature. The ex- 
isting form of the physical constitution, therefore, is entirely 
dependent on the will of God. Every one of its laws, when 
creation is viewed on a comprehensive scale, is, for anything we 
know, as strictly provisional as any of the temporary enact- 
ments of the Jewish ritual. The regularity of nature, for un- 
numbered ages, is quite compatible with subsequent changes 
in its constitution. Its present uniformity is only conditional. 
Indeed, every destructive earthquake, though itself the result of 
general laws, is, in so far as it is destructive, a breach of that 
uniformity and stabihty of nature, for which the animal is made, 
and shows that such uniformity is not inviolable. While the 
successive appearance of races of animals, entirely unknown to 
pre-existing nature, shows that it is a uniformity as compatible 
with the addition of nev/ creations as with the destruction of 
old ones. Still the order of sequence, which each law implies, 
being estabhshed, the animal is under physical obligation or 
necessity to respect it ; and inevitably suffers if found in a 
wrong relation to it. 

4. Suppose, then, that having suffered from a violation of one 
of these laws — from ignorance of the sequence, for example, 
between contact with fire and the injury of the limb burnt — 
suppose that, immediately on that injury, an animal had been 
endowed with intelligence and conscience, so as to recognize 
in that sequence a Divine appointment, forbidding it to repeat 
the act on pain of certainly repeating the injury, it would then 
be under a moral obligation to respect it ; and its not doing so 
would be guilty as well as wrong. And then, besides the pain 
inevitably following the violation of a physical law, the viola- 
tion of a moral law might be expected to be followed by an in- 
dependent penalty of its own. 



260 MAN. 

Now, man comes into a system of fixed relations and con- 
sequent obligations — a system of which physical laws are only 
the exponents and means ; and, unlike the instance of the ani- 
mal which we have just supposed, he brings with him the ele- 
ments of a moral as well as of a physical constitution. And 
there may be a right and a wrong in his every movement in 
respect to the constitution into which he comes, moral as well 
as physical ; and he may enjoy or may suffer the consequences, 
quite apart from all considerations of innocence or guilt. 
Temperance, purity, and truth, are right, and the opposite 
qualities are wrong ; but if he practise temperance without 
knowing it to be right, there is no merit, yet he enjoys the 
benefit of having thus acted in harmony with the constitution 
into which he has come ; and if he practise impurity, without 
knowing, or the means of knowing, that it is wrong, though 
there is no demerit, he suffers the consequences of the act. 
"An action, by which any natural passion is gratified (says 
Butler) procures delight or advantage, abstracted from all con- 
sideration of the morality of such action; consequently the 
pleasure or advantage in this case is gained by the action 
itself, not by the morality of it." * The same is true of culti- 
vating right or wrong states of mind in relation to God or man. 
There is, as we have before remarked, a right state of mind 
towards every external object ; and such is the nature of the 
constitution into which we come, that we cannot cultivate the 
right state of mind, even though ignorant that it is right, with- 
out advantage ; nor indulge the wrong affections, even igno- 
rantly, without disadvantage. 

5. If, however, a man cherish a wrong state of mind, knowing 
it to be wrong, and, therefore, contrary to the will of God, he 
becomes guilty as well as wrong. Before, he was wrong only 
as to his condition, now he shows himself wrong as to his char- 
acter. Before, he was wrong in reference to that constitution 
of relations and obligations into which he had come ; now, he is 
wrong in respect to that Divine Being whose will that constitu- 
tion is meant to embody and express ; so that even if that con- 
stitution could be changed to suit the wrong state of his mind, 
unless the divine will could be changed also, he would still be 
subjectively wrong as to infinitely the greatest of all relations. 
Wrong, then, respects his objective relations ; guilt, his sub- 
jective state, also. All guilt imphes wrong, but all wrong does 

* Analogy, Pajt I. c. liL 



O 



tTNIFORMITT. 261 

not necessarily imply guilt. Right and wrong respect his hap- 
piness only ; innocence and guilt respect his virtue also. The 
former contemplate him as an involuntary part of that consti- 
tution whose relations and consequent obligations are as immu- 
table as the great reason on which they repose ; while the lat- 
ter contemplate him as that moral and accountable part of the 
constitution by and to whom the Divine manifestation is made, 
and who is capable of appreciating and voluntarily subserving 
it. Right and wrong respect his objective relations, and as such 
are fixed and unalterable ; guilt and innocence are subjective, 
and vary according to the knowledge, powers, and opportunities 
of the subject himself. 

G. Now, if mere wrong, or the ignorant violation of any of 
the laws of the constitution under which man has been formed, 
and which he is supposed never to have had the means of 
knowing, be attended with an evil in the uniform sequence of 
cause and effect, how much more may an additional evil be ex- 
pected to follow, if he violate the law, knowing it to exist, and to 
exist as an expression of the Divine will ! " The consequences 
of any action, then, are to be regarded in a twofold light : first, 
the consequences which follow the action as right or wrong, and 
which depend on the present constitution of things ; and, sec- 
ondly, those which follow the action as innocent or guilty, — 
that is, as violating or not violating our obhgations to our Crea- 
tor." The former may be estimated, but, unless we could 
measure our obligations to God, the latter must exceed all our 
conceptions. Hence, it is of the highest possible importance 
that we should both know our duty, and be furnished with all 
suitable inducements to perform it. 

7. What, then, are the means which the twofold exigence of 
the case requires ? Evidently, the operation of laws of a two- 
fold nature. First, that man should possess intelligence to per- 
ceive that the universe of which he forms a part has a constitu- 
tion, or is governed by laws. Unless it possessed such a consti- 
tution, in vain would it be for man to be endowed -vWth a capa- 
city for recognizing it. And just as useless for man would it 
be fo]' such a constitution to exist, unless he were endowed with 
the power of recognizing its laws. 

(1.) If both these conditions, however, exist : if man finds, 
for instance, that he is created Avith certain capacities for enjoy- 
ment, and that certain objects are created and placed around 
him, precisely adapted to these capacities, it is an evident indi- 
cation that the one should be exercised on the other, so as to 
render man happy. 



262 



MAN. 



(2.) If, again, it be found that he cannot gratify any particu- 
lar capacity for enjoyment beyond a certain degree, witliout 
inducing pain, and impairing that capacity for subsequent enjoy- 
ment, it is then as clear an indication that such desire is to be 
gratified only within certain Hmits, as that it should be gratified 
at all. 

(3.) But man is capable of various kinds of enjoyment. If 
the indulgence of one kind — say, that arising from food beyond 
a certain degree — is found inimical to his enjoyment of another 
kind — say, that arising from the pursuit of knowledge — the 
necessity of that limitation is still more authoritatively ex- 
pressed. 

(4.) "When it is found, further, that certain actions and habits 
are not only attended with happiness, but that the very exercise, 
within the assigned limits, of those parts of his nature which the 
happiness supposes, is itself essential to his well-being, and even 
to his continued existence, the measured employment of those 
powers is made still more imperative. 

(5.) And the case is rendered still stronger if it appear that 
the same course of conduct which is, on the whole, injurious or 
beneficial to himself, is also injurious or beneficial to society. 
History then adds its voice to that of his own individual expe- 
rience. And although the conclusions thus arrived at are, by 
supposition, quite irrespective of conscious guilt or innocence, 
and result solely from the consequences of conduct^ he knoAvs 
the right course concerning such conduct as much as if it had 
been proclaimed to him by a voice from heaven. And thus the 
first part of the exigence is met, by Avhich we are to be kept 
from wrong, in relation to the constitution under which we have 
been formed. 

8. But if this constitution be an announcement of the Avill of 
God concerning us, we sustain a relation to Him in every ac- 
tion we perform which involves peculiar obligations. Hence, 
secondly, the necessity for that moral part of our nature which 
makes us aware of our obligations. The rightness of an act, 
and our obligation to perform it, are entirely distinct. Having 
ascertained the will of God respecting an action, or perceived 
its rightness, it is important that we should, in addition, be 
conscious of our obligation to do it. For, as it would be useless 
for man to be made capable of recognizing obligation to obey 
the Divine will in a world which contained no expression of that 
win, so it would be useless for such a constitution as that which 
is extant to exist, unless man were endowed with the capacity 



r^ 



UNIFORMITY. 263 

of recognizing the obligation in which it involves him to the 
Divine Creator. Unless, then, it should be affirmed that man's 
obhgations do not differ in a universe with a God, when that 
God, too, is its Creator, from what they would be in a universe 
withovi a God (were such a thing possible) ; or, that man's rela- 
tions to the Infinite Maker of the whole are not so important as 
his relations to the thing made, and which he is endowed with 
intellect to recognize, he may be expected to be endowed with 
a power of recognizing his obligations to God. 

(1.) If, then, on ascertaining the will of God in reference to 
any course of action, we are conscious of a sense of obligation 
to obey it, (an obligation distinct from the motive relating to 
mere advantage,) this is the voice of a law within us — the law 
of conscience. The perceived tendency of our conduct is one 
thing, its relation to the Divine will is felt to be another. While 
the former is seen to be only advantageous, the latter is felt to 
involve an element of morality. 

(2.) If, again, this discrimination of the moraHty of an action 
be felt to carry with it a reason for its performance superior to 
every other consideration, this also is the voice of a deep-seated 
law of our nature. It is an impulsive sense of obligation added 
to mere motives of interest, and irrespective of them. It is the 
imperative within responding to the imperative on high, and ut- 
tering its mandates in behalf of truth and justice, even when the 
relations of a particular line of conduct to our ease and advantage 
are unknown to us. 

(3.) But, more, if it is found that obedience to this sense of 
obhgation, even when it relates to actions apparently trivial, 
and when the customs of society run in a contrary direction, is 
attended with more exquisite enjoyment than any other source 
can yield, the highest evidence is afforded of the existence of 
the law of conscience within us. 

_ (4.) And when it is found that obedience to this law, attended 
with so much moral enjoyment, is also coincident with, and 
essential to, our highest well-being, we cannot fail to recognize 
the provision by which the second part of the exigence is met, 
and by which we are restrained from guilt in relation to the will 
of God. If the manner in which the first part of the necessity 
is met discloses the right or wrong tendency of actions, the man- 
ner in which the second is met respects the guilt or innocence 
of the agents. If the former supplies facts, the latter develops 
ideas. If, by the one, we gradually form convictions, and arrive 
at conclusions, by the other, we are made conscious of implanted 



264 MAN. 

sentiments and immutable obligations. If the former teaches us 
the propriety of subordinating appetite to self-love, and self-love 
to the benevolent affections, the latter commands us to subordi- 
nate the whole to conscience. 

9. Now, in a perfectly constituted intellectual and moral 
being, it is evident that there would be a perfect adjustment 
between every external being and quality, and the internal 
faculties. " A perfectly constituted intellect would, under the 
proper conditions, discern the relations in which the being 
stood to other beings ; and a perfectly constituted conscience 
would, at the same time, become conscious of all the obligations 
which arose from such relations, and would impel us to the 
corresponding courses of conduct."* We say, under the proper 
conditions, for even with intellectual and moral powers suited 
to his station, man would still be dependent on his Maker for 
direct information. This will appear if it be remembered that 
there are many laws, the transgression of which entails suffer- 
ing, which cannot appear except in the more advanced stages 
of life, and even of society ; and that, as the mode of teaching 
natural religion is by experience, " we cannot certainly know 
what the law is, except by first breaking it." Hence, though 
the first man was endowed with a perfect moral constitution, it 
was necessary that God should make to him a special revelation 
respecting a certain portion of His will. And it might have 
been expected, a priori, that, in the event of man's nature be- 
coming disordered, the aid which he would require would neces- 
sarily include, first, additional light to perceive his relations ; 
or, secondly, greater moral discrimination to perceive the result- 
ing obligations ; or, thirdly, additional motives to obey them, or 
all three conjoined. 

10. But, deferring this subject to the close of the next chap- 
ter, the two-fold generalization of all human actions into those 
which are right or wrong as related to the constitution of things, 
and those which are innocent or guilty as related to our obliga- 
tions to Him who has placed us under this constitution, brings 
us to the following conclusions: — that however disordered man's 
nature may become, and however much he may come to need 
the aid we have referred to, he is still, and ever must be, under 
the relations and obligations of moral government. Ignorant 
though he may be of the facts, the indulgence of revenge will 
not the less torment, nor impurity the less debase him. And if, 

* Wayland's Moral Science, c. iii. § 2. 



O 



UNIFORMITY. 2C5 

knowing that such are the penalties attaclied by God to these 
acts and tempers, he yet persist in them, he incurs the additional 
pain attending a consciousness of guik. " Duty obhges us, though 
it does not force us ; and even at the time we violate it, v.'e can- 
not deny it." To suppose that man's violation of the law would 
be an adequate reason for its modification, would be to make 
failure and wrong the law of the constitution, and depravity give 
law to virtue. 

11. It follows, also, that an action may be right without being 
virtuous — right in relation to the constitution of things to which 
vre belong, but destitute of all reference to the will of Him who 
has called us into it. From which it results, also, that an action, 
may be right in the former respect, w^hile, in the latter respect, 
it may be not only destitute of virtue, but absolutely sinful. 
For if, knowing it to be required by the will of God, he yet per- 
forms it without any regard to that requirement, but solely from 
some inferior motive, he is guilty of violating the highest obli- 
gation of which he can be conscious. On the other hand, an 
action may be wrong and yet innocent, for the man may have 
neither known the will of God concerning it, nor have had the 
means of knowing it. Then, further, a man's non-consciousness 
of guilt is no proof of virtue. It may be owing entirely to his 
ignorance of duty. And, further, such non-consciousness of 
guilt, if the ignorance to which it is owing be voluntary, may 
involve sin of the greatest aggravation. If, by his own conduct, 
he has disquahfied himself for apprehending his obhgations, his 
ignorance may be the greatest enhancement of his guilt, for it 
may denote the advanced stage to which his moral disqualifica- 
tion has reached. 

12. This view of man's twofold relation imparts an entirely 
new aspect to creation. The physical constitution of the world 
becomes the means of moral government. With the coming of 
man, the earth became the seat of a Divine monarchy. The 
constancy of nature, which, under the previous or animal dis- 
pensation, had been essential merely to animal well-being, was 
now promoted into an instrument of moral rule. Now first,. 
law prevailed in the true and proper meaning of the term. 
Hitherto, laws were the mere modes of the Divine operation in 
nature, and, as such, existed only in the mind of God. But now 
they existed in the mind of man also. He had ideas answering 
to them. Each of them announced itself to him with the author- 
ity of a Di^^ne appointment. His intellectual nature enabled 
him to perceive its inevitable tendency. His moral nature iatro- 



266 MAN. 

duced him to its Author, and made him conscious that he ought 
to conform to it. However conditional on the will of God its 
particular form might be, jet coming to him as an expression of 
that will, it placed him in a relation to God, involving an obli- 
gation which he could not disregard without guilt. For as that 
will is based on perfect and immutable reason, every relation 
which man sustains to it, and every obligation resulting from 
such relation, must be immutable also. 

13. Let it not be supposed, however, that because God gov- 
erns according to natural laws, there is therefore no room left 
for his providential superintendence.* That he operates by means 
of these, does not imply that he is confined to them. They an- 
nounce, but do not limit, His operations. If by laws of nature, 
are meant the sequences of causes and effects which existed 
prior to man's creation, his introduction must surely be regarded 
as involving the addition of laws entirely novel and unique. 
His moral nature made him capable, as we have seen, of moral 
government. Here was a demonstration that the pre-existing 
laws had not been the measure of the Divine operations ; for 
here, without disturbing them, God was pleased to add to them. 
But if by laws of nature are meant those additional laws also — 
both the laws which had regulated the course of nature prior to 
man's creation and to which man is configured, and also the 
new laws which are proper to his moral nature — among these 
latter there may be laws which leave room for Providential in- 
terposition and spiritual operation, though without disturbing the 
former laws any more than his creation did. Both may be com- 
prehended in the same great plan, and the latter may be even 
the supplement and complement of the former. So that if one 
party should ascribe a disease or an untimely end which a man 
had brought on by his own misconduct, to a violation of the laws 
of nature, and if another should regard it as a dispensation of 
Providence", they need not be regarded as opposed to each other. 
Both are, in reality, equally correct. The former errs only on 
the supposition that he views the laws of nature as real exist- 
ences, not as mere modes of Divine operation, but as exclusive, 
independent, and unconditional ; the latter errs only on the sup- 
position that he views the evil as traceable to the Divine sove- 

* Many of the natural laws are forcibly illustrated in Mr. Combe's 
" Constitution of Man." It were to be wished, however, that while suc- 
cessfully rescuing these laws from the hands of ignorance and superstition, 
he had not, at the same time, apparently ignored the providential superin- 
tendence of the Law-giver. 



O 



WELL-BEING. 267 

reign ty, rather than to the Divine equity — as an arbitrary 
infliction, rather than as the natural and righteous result of the in- 
fraction of laws by which God governs the world. Proximately, 
the evil results from the violation of natural laws ; ultimately 
and efficiently it results from that omnipresent Being in whose 
will the entire scheme of things at first originated, by whom it is 
maintained in constant operation, and to whom it is always com- 
petent to touch the springs of human volition by influences 
unknown to material laws, though perfectly compatible with 
them, as well as with the moral freedom of the man, and even 
in order to it. Viewed as flowing from the operation of natural 
law, it is opposed to the ideas of chance and caprice ; viewed as 
resulting from natural law, under the administration of a super- 
intending Providence, it is equally opposed to bhnd necessity 
or fate. 



CHAPTER Xm. 



WELL-BEING. 



1. The ideas of obligation and law, developed in the two 
chapters immediately preceding, prepare us to expect, in har- 
mony with another of our laws, " that man will be found to 
enjoy an amount of good or well-being proportioned to the dis- 
charge of his obligations." His nature necessarily expresses 
something of the Divine Nature. He is brought into existence 
in order to express it. He sustains relations adapted to elicit 
and receive the manifestation. And he is held under obligation 
to this effect. He cannot, therefore, fulfil the law of his being, 
without enjoying well-being. For, to manifest whatever his na- 
ture is calculated to exhibit of God, is to stand related, on one 
side, to the greatest of Beings, and on the other to the greatest 
of ends. Nor could he be supposed to be in any way deprived 
of his right to happiness while thus fulfilHng the highest end of 
his existence, without the great end itself being, in so far, de- 
feated. And if the nature of God be infinitely holy and happy, 
and His will be the dictate of His nature, then in proportion as 
man conforms to that will, his well-being rests on the immutable 
basis of the Divine nature. 



268 MAN. 

A regard to his own well-being, indeed, is not to be the su- 
preme motive of man's obedience. His highest incentive is, as 
we have seen, to be derived from the highest object — a regard 
to the character and will of God. But it might be expected an- 
tecedent to experience, that, in the government of a perfect Being, 
the greatest good of the creature would be made coincident with 
the highest glory of the Creator. And as far as we know, or, 
according to the most enlarged views we can form of the Divine 
administration, it is so. 

2. Viewing man's nature apart from his external relations, 
we may remark generally, that his well-being at any given mo- 
ment, depends on the actual presence, the orderly development, 
and the due activity, of every essential part of his constitution. 
Let either of these conditions be wanting, and the derangement, 
or defective state of the whole, must be the inevitable conse- 
quence. Let the appetites be indulged beyond the appointed 
limits, and the higher faculties will exist comparatively in vain ; 
every such indulgence brings him nearer to the level of the ani- 
mal. Let them be restrained beyond a certain limit, and, even 
though the occasion be devotion itself, his moral and mental 
powers will share in the evil consequences, as well as his physi- 
cal. Let his intellectual powers fail to be duly exercised, and 
in vain will the laws of the external universe exist, and even 
execute themselves upon him ; they will convey no information 
to his mind ; and, consequently, every other part of his nature 
will suffer. Let his sense of duty fail to be adequately exer- 
cised, and in vain will his relations to the external universe 
testify to him of the will of God. And thus every physical de- 
fect is an intellectual injury ; and every intellectual injury a 
moral evil. On the other hand, let all the parts of his constitu- 
tion be present, and, even if at any given moment, his subjective 
nature should be wrong, as to any of his objective relations, he 
will only need to pierceive these relations in order to harmonize 
his affections and conduct with them ; just as on awaking in the 
morning, the presence of light is all that is necessary to prepare 
him to adjust his movements to the surrounding objects. That 
is to say, no change of his constitution will be necessary. 

3. Regarding his nature as successively existent, let all the 
conditions to which I have referred, be present from the first, 
and let them be subsequently maintained in due subordination, 
each would be found to keep pace with all the rest in a course 
of constant progression, to minister to their well-being, and to 
the happiness of the whole man. But let any of these conditions 



O 



WELL-BEING. 269 

be wanting, and a new view of the consequences appear. Man's 
nature, as we have seen, is continuous and accumulative ; his 
character, at any one period of his existence, being the exact 
result of all that it has been through every preceding period. 
" Many men fancy that the sUght injuries done by each single 
act of intemperance are like the glomeration of moonbeams 
upon moonbeams — myriads will not amount to a positive value. 
Perhaps they are wrong, possibly every act — nay, every separate 
pulse or throb of intemperate sensation — is numbered in our 
own after actions ; reproduces itself in some future perplexity ; 
comes back in some re visionary shape that injures the freedom 
of action for all men, and makes good men afflicted. At all 
events, it is an undeniable fact, that many a case of difficulty, 
which in apology for ourselves we very traly plead to be insur- 
mountable by our existing energies, has borrowed its sting from 
previous acts or omissions of our own : it might not have been 
insurmountable, had we better cherished our physical resources." 
We accept this view as more than a speculation. " Physiology," 
says Liebig,* " has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion, 
that every conception, every mental affection, is followed by 
changes in the chemical nature of the secreted fluid ; that every 
thought, every sensation, is accompanied by a change in the 
composition of the substance of the brain." Whether we receive 
this statement as physiologically true or not, it is certain that, 
in the account of psychology, every mental movement has a 
real value. As a creature of memory, every thought which 
man voluntarily entertains will abide with him forever. If it 
be a thought in harmony with the Divine will, and he has acted 
in harmony with it, it will never cease to yield him good ; if he 
have not so acted, it will never cease to reproach and condemn 
him. If it be an evil thought, and he have repented of it, and 
have not carried it out into action, it can yet never cease to be 
an occasion of regret. If he have not repented of it, it remains 
with him, in effect, as an ever-running fountain of pollution. 
How teiTible the ordeal of having to meet the sinful thoughts 
of a long life of guilt ! How fearful the prospect of having to 
confront them, not for an age, merely, or a million of ages, but 
to have the ordeal repeated through every point of endless 
duration ! 

4. Man's nature is progressive also. As a creature of habit, 
the repetition of a voluntary act produces a tendency to con- 

* Animal Chemistry, p. 9. 
23* 



270 MAN. 

tinued repetition and diffusion. By the repetition of a virtuous 
act, moral power is gained ; but as less moral power is required 
to perform that particular act, there is (as Dr. Wayland happily 
expresses it) a surplus to be expended in the performance of 
other virtuous acts. By the repetition of a vicious act, moral 
power is diminished ; but as more moral power is required to 
resist the augmented power of the passions which prompt to 
the repetition of that particular act, the likelihood that it will 
be repeated is increased, as well as that the surplus force of the 
passions will be expended in the performance of other vicious 
acts. Thus, like an error admitted into the early stage of a 
calculation conducted by geometrical progression, and which 
goes on repeating and enlarging itself at every step of the 
reckoning, till the unit soon swells into millions, there is not 
merely a tendency in evil to perpetuate itself, and so to become 
unalterable, but to multiply itself with a rapidity which defies 
calculation. In estimating a virtuous action, then, we must not 
merely look at its immediate consequences — these may be the 
smallest part of the advantage — but at the tendency to virtuous 
action ever after, which it includes and promotes. And in esti- 
mating a vicious action, we must look not merely at its direct 
effects, but (what may be much greater) at the tendency to vice 
which it brings with it. The immediate effects of an act of 
inebriety may be calculable ; but if the act lead to the habit, 
the reckoning must include all the vicious courses which that 
act began to prepare the drunkard for. So that even if he be 
less answerable for the particular acts committed when intoxi- 
cated than he would have been had he been sober, the sum-total 
of his guilt is not thus diminished ; there is only a transfer made 
of it to a different column of the reckoning — namely, to the 
course of immoderate indulgence, by which he placed himself 
in a state of moral defencelessness, and thus qualified himself 
for the perpetration of evil. In the same way, a man may 
pervert his judgment, and thus disqualify himself for believing 
the testimony of the gospel at the close of life, by having begun 
to yield to the force of his passions early in life. Now, even if 
he is less guilty for his disbelief under these circumstances than 
he w^ould have been had he never so yielded, this does not lessen 
the sum-total of his guilt. He is still responsible, and ever will 
be, for the process by which he disqualified himself for receiving 
the testimony of his Maker. 

5. From habit results character and its consolidation. By 
character is not to be understood original temperament, or con- 



O 



WELL-BEING. 



271 



stitutional tendency. Such idiosyncracy may be closely related 
to it, but does not constitute it. On the contrary, character may 
overbear it, and be even formed in defiance of it. Character is 
the slow and conscious product of man's voluntary nature. " As 
a man thinketh in his heart so is he." It is that which identifies 
him with his moral self at different stages of his being ; and 
hence, it is only on the supposition that his character is changed 
that he is said to lose his moral identity, and to become a " new 
creature." It discriminates him from all his fellow-beings, as 
one having "his own way." It places him in a distinctive 
relation to the government of God. And, as such, it asks for 
him finally " his own place." However much he may have 
first apparently resembled others, his character gradually be- 
comes more and more unique. Like the organs of embryotic 
life, as soon as character becomes distinguishable, it is found to 
be specific. And this difference is not merely constant, but 
ever evolving. Like the slow deposit of an ever-flowing 
mountain stream, character is always acquiring a bolder outline, 
and firmer consistency. As a medium of mental vision, it sheds 
a more decided color on every object on wliich the mind looks. 
As a power of assimilation, it gradually ceases to be affected by 
outward things, but converts them more easily to its own nature, 
and appropriates them more entirely to its own purposes. It 
is subjective ; " the hidden man of the heart " subordinating the 
outer man, and the outer world, to itself Its purposes act 
independently of the feelings of pleasure and pain from which 
they first took their rise. It is the oracle and earnest of his 
future destiny. If its aim be to harmonize with the will of God, 
it is constantly approaching the unchangeable without, as well 
as within. At every upward step it is emerging from the un- 
certainty of probation, into the region of stability and repose. 
Its path " shineth more and more ;" every sweep of its wing 
bearing it nearer to the uncreated light, and more within the 
circle in which every object feels the ever-growing attraction 
of the Divine Centre. 

6. This course of remark clearly presupposes man's objective 
relations. That he sustains such relations we have already 
seen ; we have now to show^ that there is no obligation resulting 
from these, obedience to which is not essential to his w^ell-being 
as an integral portion of the great system, and as a subject of 
the Divine government. For example : as a creature, physical, 
organic, and animal, there is an appropriate locality for him on 
the surface of the globe, as well as a state of the atmosphere, a 



272 MAN. 

kind and a quantity of food, and a degree of muscular activity ; 
and his bodily welfare depends on the constant and peifect 
adjustment of this part of his system to the corresponding parts 
of external nature, or, on the entire coincidence of the two. 
Every element is constantly saying to him, in effect, " I am the 
servant of God ; use me in harmony with His appointment, and 
I will minister to your welfare." Every physical law is saying 
to him, " Adjust yourself to me ; and be strong, secure, and 
happy." And religion, so far from exempting him from obedi- 
ence to these laws even for religious purposes, except on the 
special authority of the Lawgiver, adds its own solemn sanction 
to enforce compliance. 

As a sentient being, every object is saying to him, " Stand at 
such a distance from me, and you shall perceive my color, pro- 
portions, and aU that can be seen of my physical properties. 
View me from any other point, and you shall 'be the victim of 
optical illusion. Listen, and you shall hear a thousand melo- 
dious sounds and warning voices. Be inattentive ; and, for 
you, creation shaU be silent." As a reflective being, let him 
examine, remember, and compare ; and he will daily increase 
his knowledge. Let him hold intercourse with others, and he 
will correct his knowledge. Let him believe the credible testi- 
mony of another, and he will double it, adding to it the know- 
ledge of another mind. As a rational being, he cannot refer 
facts to their first principles without becoming conversant with 
the infinite and the absolute. And thus the most simple objects 
and events would remind him of the invisible and the sublime ; 
and earth become the porch of a temple containing the holiest 
of all. By his imagination he might enter that temple, and 
even pass reverently within its awful veil. Being endowed 
with the powers of speech, he is capable of adding to his own 
not merely the knowledge, but the power, of another mind. 
Falsehood, by begetting distrust, cuts off this communication, 
and leaves the subject of it in a state of unwilling isolation from 
all around. While scepticism and unbelief place a man in vol- 
untary isolation from all that could instruct and benefit him in 
the reciprocity of confidence and faith. Mutual truthfulness 
and confidence are essential to human happiness ; and, in pro- 
portion as these qualities exist, (other things being equal,) hap- 
piness exists. 

If he carry out his emotions to their appropriate objects, and 
proportion them to the value of those objects, his life -wall be 
one of enjoyment. On the other hand, let them fall short of 



O 



WELL-BEING. 273 

these objects, and he himself will fall short of the end of his 
being. In that case, his desire of property, if gratified, will, 
instead of bringing him the pleasures of charity, torture him 
with the fever of covetousness. Desiring power for its own 
sake, he will find himself involved in the cares and jealousies of 
a petty despotism. Desiring emotion of any kind for its own 
sake, he will go through life, as thousands do, crying, " Give, 
give ! " and never be satisfied. As a voluntary being, the per- 
formance of a wrong action involuntarily (only let him not 
deceive himself on this vital point) will not diminish his moral 
self-approbation, nor will the involuntary performance of the 
best action add to his moral enjoyment. Hence the folly of the 
indevout in expecting happiness from the scenes and services of 
Heaven. While the conscious and voluntary coincidence of the 
mind with the Divine will can make it familiar with heavenly 
pleasures even while here upon earth. As a being endowed 
with the power of conscience, he is happv in exact proportion as 
he yields to its enlightened dictates, and becomes the subject of 
moral approbation. And all this, just because everything cre- 
ated which co-exists with him, has been called into existence 
and activity for the same end as himself. The laws of his being 
therefore, so far from running counter to the laws, physical and 
moral, of the objective universe, must perfectly coincide with 
them. Both form parts of one great whole, and have their 
basis in the Divine Nature. 

7. In these remarks, however, we may appear to suppose 
that the various parts of our nature are of equal importance ; 
whereas we have found that, in harmony with the law of subor- 
dination which prevails in the objective universe, a law of cor- 
responding subordination exists also in the constitution of man. 
Every part of our nature occupies a place in the human con- 
stitution, and possesses a right in relation to every other part, 
according to its power of subserving the end of creation. Thus, 
we have seen that the laws of appetite must be obeyed ; that 
the obedience is attended with present gratification ; that it 
strengthens and prepares the man for the pursuit of higher grat- 
ifications ; and is essential to the continuance of the race. . 

Pleasures of sense, however, as Paley remarks, continue but 
a little while at a time ; soon lose their relish by repetition ; 
soon arrive at a limit from which they ever afterwards decline. 
Besides which, if I indulge my appetites to excess, I may de- 
stroy their power of ever after affording me enjoyment. StiU 
more ; as I am capable of deriving gratification from knowledge, 



274 MAN. 

as knowledge is necessary to my well-being, and as it yields me 
purer and more permanent satisfaction than the gratification of 
ray appetite, I must not indulge my appetite so as to incapaci- 
tate myself for study. True it is, that neither must I study so 
as to be disabled from partaking of my necessary food. Each 
gratification is right within certain limits. The unlimited allow- 
ance of either would be destructive to the man, and to the race. 
But if one is to be subordinated to the other, if the question be 
whether the pleasures of appetite or of intellect rank higher, 
there can be no hesitation respecting the answer. 

But man is to inhabit the future, and the future, on various 
accounts, ranks higher in importance than the present ; higher 
in point of duration ; and higher in this important respect, that 
it will find him more capable of happiness or of misery than he 
is at present. Accordingly, Self-love, or a regai-d for his well- 
being on the whole, requires him to subordinate even his present 
thirst for knowledge ; and in proportion as he practises a wise 
self-denial for this end, he is benefited and happy. 

But I am made chiefly to subserve the great end ; to know, 
love, voluntarily serve, and subordinate myself to, the will of 
God in the manifestation of His glory. This is the true and 
ultimate reason of my existence. Only let my self-love itself, 
then, take the form of love to God and obedience to Him, and 
it becomes coincident with His highest glory ; while, on the 
other hand, my regard for His glory is coincident with my 
highest well-being. And this is the only motive which is so. 
Thus, if an act which conscience had often dictated, is performed 
by me, at length, to gratify my passions, I lose the pleasure of 
virtue, and lay myself open to the pains of remorse. If I per- 
form it from self-love, though I gain whatever advantage 
belongs to the action according to the constitution under which 
I am placed, still I lose the pleasure of rectitude. " Verily, I 
have my reward." If I perform it from a benevolent impulse, 
a yet higher "gratification is enjoyed, and one including the prior 
kind of advantage, in another form, also ; but still the pleasure 
of conscious obedience is wanting. But if I perform it from 
affectionate obedience to the will of God, I secure, in other 
forms, all the advantages flowing from the other classes of mo- 
tives, and the nobler rewards of conscious conformity to the 
Divine will, in addition. The stream cannot rise higher than 
its source ; nor can the reward of an action transcend the level 
of the actuating motive. If, like the pure river, clear as crys- 
tal, it " proceed from the throne of God," thither it will conduct 



O 



"WELL-BUING. 275 

me to " see His face." A supreme regard for His will, I re- 
peat, is coincident with my highest well-being. How can it be 
otherwise ? My nature has been made to manifest his nature, 
and my will to serve his will. To love and serve Him, then, is 
to keep every separate part of my nature in harmony with 
every other part, and the whole in harmony with Him. To be 
like Him, is to share his happiness. To sympathize with Him, 
is to find perfection. Every part of man's nature, then, was 
meant to be perpetually crying out for the living God. And, 
still, the highest distinction we can think of is expressed when 
we say, " We shall be like Him ; " " we shall be satisfied when 
we awake up in His likeness." 

8. But man sustains also external relations successively ex- 
istent. And there is no obligation of this class, obedience to 
which is not essential to his well-being. While everything 
within him and without him points, as we have seen, to an end- 
less duration of being, in which all the results of past conduct 
and character pass into every present moment, and so on- 
wards to all the future. Here the field widens into a bound- 
less prospect ! For if no holy thought or emotion is ever to be 
entirely lost out of my nature ; if it be the tendency of every 
virtuous emotion and action to reproduce itself and to produce 
others like it; if every virtuous movement thus tends to en- 
large my capacity for virtue ; and if God, to whom I sustain 
the most intimate objective relation, be infinite, and my own 
duration be unending, then, " it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be ! " 

9. Here, then, as Butler remarks, is "the proper formal 
notion of government ; the annexing pleasure to some actions 
and pain to others, in our power to do or forbear, and giving no- 
tice beforehand to those whom it concerns." Here is Obliga- 
tion, together with the Laws which it presupposes, and the 
Sanctions which they imply in the known results of obedience 
and disobedience. The fact that there is no formal arraign- 
ment, no jury, no pubhc trial, no judicial pageant and parade, 
often no lapse of time between the transgression and the pen- 
alty, forms no objection to this view. What civil magistrate 
would not gladly see his laws taking sure and silent effect in a 
similar manner, executing themselves upon the offender, without 
any magisterial interposition, or the formaUties of a judicial pro- 
cess ? His noise and pomp are only the concealments of his 
weakness. His intrusive inquisitions and balancing of evi- 
dence betray his self-distrust. His elaborate objective an-ange- 



276 MAN. 

ments and appeals confess his conscious impotence over the 
subjective, 

10. Nor is it any valid objection to this view, as some sup- 
pose, that pain is not necessarily punitive, but may be only 
monitory. The true explanation appears to be that it may be 
both ; that it may be made either by the subject of it ; and was 
designed by the Moral Governor to be what the subject made 
it. That is to say, that, in the case of involuntary wrong, it is 
meant to warn ; that in the case of voluntary wrong, or guilt, 
it is meant to warn and also to punish ; and that when, owing 
to circumstances, it can operate only as a punishment on the 
transgressor himself — as when it proves fatal to him, or when 
it consists partly in indisposing him to amendment — it is still 
meant to act as a warning to others. 

11. Nor can it be justly objected to this view of moral gov- 
ernment, that guilt and its supposed punishment are often sepa- 
rated by a wide interval, and that in some instances the punish- 
ment does not appear to follow at all. The truth is, that the 
system of government under which we are placed is not en- 
tirely developed in the present state. Even where vice appears 
to be instantly punished, it is only the commencement of the 
punishment that is seen. No one has ever seen the full result 
of any act either of virtue or vice in this world. Death inter- 
rupts or suspends it, as far as the present life is concerned. If, 
hoAvever, the existing state could be perpetuated, the penal con- 
sequences of every sin would sooner or later be found taking fuU 
effect. Every man would have a day of judgment in his his- 
tory. And it is the ineradicable conviction of the human mind 
that those consequences, inteiTupted or suspended here, are cer- 
tainly resumed and developed elsewhere. Often, indeed, the 
consequences of a guilty act appear and infix themselves on the 
doer at the distance of half the globe from the scene of the 
transaction, and after the apparent slumber of years ; showing 
that he has never bieen really out of the hand of justice. And 
this reminds us that the true reply to the objection is that the 
separation between guilt and punishment is only apparent ; that 
the first element of punishment consists in the depraving ten- 
dency of the guilty deed itself; so that the sin infolds its own 
punishment ; from the same root gi'ow the tempting fruit and 
the rod that chastises. The punishment of which the objector 
speaks is only one of the visible results of the transgression. 
The invisible consequence may be incomparably greater ; and 
this, we repeat, begins with the very act of transgression. They 



r^ 



WELL-BEING. 277 

are a twin birth. The transgressor is " a sinner against liis 
own soul." Sin arms him against himself. It is his own nature 
which he violates. The blow aimed at the law falls on himself, 
not by rebound, but directly ; for he enshrines the law. " His 
sin is ever before him." Amidst the silence and solitude of the 
desert there is a voice accusing him ; and during the midnight 
slumbers of all around him, there is an eye sternly upbraiding 
him. Or it may be that he sins with little compunction. But 
can this be considered a felicity ? It only proves that his moral 
disease has reached an advanced stage. He is " past feeling." 
The outward man may be unscathed, but the lightning has dis~ 
charged its stroke on the spirit. His " conscience is seared." 
And this punishment which denaturalizes and destroys waited 
not even for the first act of sin ; with the first thought of evil 
it had already begun to take effect. 

12. Now of such government the first man was a subject. 
With him, probably, it commenced on earth. From the mor- 
ment of his creation he enclosed within himself a whole system^ 
of moral government — laws, and judge, and prison, and instru- 
ments of torture, if he disobeyed ; rewards, and happiness, and 
conscious improvement, if he obeyed. The law was in him 
and around him. Nowhere was he beyond its jurisdiction. 
Nothing escaped its unslumbering eye. Never was he dis- 
missed from its presence. Every object and event offered 
itself as its exponent and instrument. Pure, calm, and uniform, 
as omnipotent holiness, it saw no difficulty, bent to no indul- 
gence. Man's own nature was its judgment hall ; his capacity 
for hohness its medium of reward ; his power of sinning its in- 
strument of punishment. This was truly the majesty of law, 
and the perfection of government. 

13. As the subject of this government, man possesses the 
requisites of natural religion. Its sources are, as we have seen, 
the constitution of the mind, the light derivable from the laws 
of external nature, and from the administration of Providence. 
And these means of religious knowledge exist for the human 
mind in the order in which they are here stated. The prov- 
idential administration presupposes the laws of nature, for 
these are the laws administered. A governor supposes laws by 
which his government is conducted. And these natural laws, 
again, presuppose man's intellectual and moral constitution, 
for to that constitution they appeal, and by it they are interpre- 
ted. Apart from that constitution, these laws have no- intel- 
lectual nor moral meaning.. Strictly speaking, they are only 

24 



278 MAN. 

manifestations of laws, the ideas of whicli exist in the mind of 
God, and the corresponding ideas to which they are designed 
to awaken in the mind of man. They stand face to face with 
him, therefore, assured that he is constituted to recognize their 
origin and import. Susceptible of a religious application, they 
appeal to him as already, in capacity and tendency, a religious 
being. Written in sympathic ink, they seem to explain him to 
himself, though it is only by the hght of his own mind that their 
characters are brought out. " Reason (says Locke) is natural 
revelation." " For the invisible things of God from the founda- 
tion of the world are clearly seen, being understood hj the things 
which are made, even his eternal power and Godhead."* They 
proclaim the Godhead only as they are understood. They 
teach man only as he is constituted to inform and mentally con- 
strue them. " The things which are made" could convey to him 
no knowledge of the Maker, did not his constitution place him 
under the subjective necessity of giving them a religious inter- 
pretation, and if that interpretation could not be relied on by 
him as valid. The subjective and the objective then, the physi- 
cal and the moral, form strictly but one system. They are not 
two worlds ; but, viewed in the light of natural religion, they 
constitute one whole. 

14. Now, assuming the existence of an intelligent Creator, of 
a pervading design in creation, of man's capability of under- 
standing that design, and especially of understanding it as an 
expression of the Divine will concerning us, it is the office of 
natural religion to ascertain and arrange our consequent duties. 
Here, conscience is of primary and supreme importance. As a 
rational being, man might perceive that he had come into a 
world animate and inanimate, possessed of a fixed constitution ; 
that some things were right for it, and other things wrong, in 
relation to that constitution ; that its laws, if disturbed, were 
ever vindicating their authority, recovering their place, and 
publishing themselves anew. As a being sentient as well as 
rational, capable of pleasure and pain, he might perceive that 
some things were right for him, in reference to the constitution 
to which he belonged, and that other things were wrong ; that 
do whatever he might, he was either benefiting or injuring 
himself; that even the vibration of pleasure, if continued beyond 
a certain point, ended in a shock of pain. But all this is only 
a benevolent arrangement, which preceded his coming. It is a 

* Eom. i. 20. 



O 



"WELL-BEING. 279 

protection from clanger, and a source of advantage, which the 
animal enjoys in common with himself. But as a moral being, 
recognizing in this arrangement the will of God concerning his 
conduct, the entire aspect of the economy is changed. The 
physical constitution becomes a moral government. His relations 
to that constitution land him in corresponding obligations to its 
Author. From the region of mere physical right and wrong, he 
emerges into the sphere of guilt and innocence, merit and 
demerit. Here God reigns ; and every part of man's nature is 
under law to Him : law differing according to the part. His 
appetites, his self-love, his benevolent affections, his religious 
capabilities : each is to be respected, but only within pre- 
scribed limits. The domain of each differs in extent and 
value ; and the regard for the Divine Avill is supreme. And the 
more the light of Nature is consulted, the more is the domain 
of conscience enlarged, and its authority illustrated. In this 
light, the results of actions are seen, the doctrine of general 
consequences comes into being. That which is apparently 
harmless to-day, is seen "bringing forth fruit unto death" 
years afterwards. An act which appeared to leave the indi- 
vidual uninjured, circulates poison through the social system. 
Moral problems ai'e analyzed and solved. Relations come to 
light in the most unexpected quarters. And motives to conse- 
quent duty collect and combine their influence from times and 
places the most distant. Now, the orderly distribution of the 
relations and obligations thus arrived at, forms the system of 
natural religion. What man ought to have done in this depart- 
ment, and what he has accomplished, form, alas ! a humihating 
contrast. 

15. The knowledge of Nature is, as far as it goes, the 
knowledge of God. And the more its laws are understood, the 
more do they " declare His glory." But the same light which 
reveals His excellence, discloses man's comparative want of it. 
And this alone should be enough to awaken our doubts respect- 
ing the sufficiency of natural rehgion : at least, for fallen man. 
But, on consideration, we perceive that its insufficiency even for 
unfallen man is inherent. He could not at any time be certain 
that he was acquainted with all the relations which bound up 
his present conduct with his future welfare, and with the welfare 
of distant ages. Nor could he be certain that he knew either 
all the ohligations resulting from the relations with which he 
was acquainted, nor the manner in which all his known obliga- 
tions should be discharged. While, in the event of voluntarily 



260 MAN. 

breaking a Divine obligation — but this was a crisis which natu- 
ral religion had not even contemplated. Other reasons of this in- 
sufficiency are evident. Many laws would have to be ascertained 
by induction. Man must experiment on his nature, interpret law 
by the violation of it. The meaning of some laws would be 
an entailed question, requiring the experience of generations. 
While all the certain motives to obedience supplied by natural 
religion would be derived from the present state. Highly prob- 
able as it can render the doctrine of a future life — probable to 
a degree which renders the rejection of it inexcusable — it can- 
not speak of it as a fact. It can " testify only to that which it 
hath seen." While experience proves that even the full expec- 
tation of future retribution as a revealed certainty, often fails 
to operate with adequate force. 

16. In the event, then, of natural rehgion being reinforced 
and enlarged by direct revelation, we can foresee the points to 
which it will be probably directed. It may be expected to in- 
crease man's knowledge of his relations, and to make him more 
deeply conscious of the extent of his obligations, as well as to 
increase his motives to obedience ; while, on the supposition of his 
falling into sin, revelation will have a reserved domain, unshared 
by nature, peculiai'ly and entirely its own. Now, in the instance 
of unfallen man, the departments we have named were precisely 
those in which the insufficiency of nature was supplemented by 
immediate revelation. The exigency of the case demanded it 
It did not so much forestal his own discoveries, as save his life. 
Its object was not to exempt him from labor, but to encourage 
him to it. In a manner which called his bodily and mental 
powers into exercise, it apprised him of his relations to the king- 
doms of nature ; thus inevitably inspiring him with gratitude to 
the God of nature. But, in order that his moral standing might be 
placed beyond question, a distinct prohibition, guarded by awful 
sanctions, informed him of his responsible relation to God, and 
supplied the adequate motives to obedience. In a word, it dis- 
closed to him without loss of time, the twofold fact that he had 
come into a fixed moral constitution, and that his own constitu- 
tion corresponded with it It presupposed his responsible nature, 
and developed it. 

17. From this point we see the error of the fatalistic materi- 
alism which teaches that our characters necessarily follow from 
our organization at birth, combined with the effiicts of subsequent 
external influences over which we have no control. If, by this, 
it were only meant that character is the result of man's subjec- 



r^ 



WELL-BEING. • 281 

tive constitution, and of tlie objective world acting upon it, we 
could say nothing against it, except that it is an obvious truism. 
From what could character result but from the world within 
and the world without ? Th^ question is, however, whether that 
internal constitution does not contain a faculty which gives man 
a controlling power over external circumstances. Even the 
plant and the animal have a constitution which enables them to 
appropriate and assimilate external elements to their own nature. 
It is not until that constitution ceases to act, that these elements 
begin to assimilate and appropriate them.- But they are not 
held responsible for the manner in which their constitution acts, 
simply beciiuse the power which it manifests, operates, as far as 
they are concerned, mechanically. The human being also acts 
according to his constitution ; but his constitution includes a 
power which is, not mechanical, but consciously his own. His 
constitution comes from God ; his character from himself. " But 
if he receive his feelings and convictions constitutionally, is not 
that the same as receiving them independently of his will ?" 
By no means. He is constituted to believe truth on evidence, 
and to draw conclusions from premises, and so forth. Assuredly, 
he does not deem this a hardship. But the world contains suf- 
ficient proof, that, if he will, he can decline looking at the evi- 
dence, or disquahfy himself for feeling its force, or train himself 
for drawing wrong conclusions as well as right ones. " Yes, if 
he will — but is not his will at the mercy of external causes, 
and formed by them ?" Influenced by them it is ; and herein, 
partly, consists its excellence ; for surely it would say little for 
the constitution of a being, that he was alike indifferent to a 
world of objects present or absent. But, controlled by them, it 
is not. A light introduced into the room of a man asleep, may 
awaken him ; but in disturbing him, it awakens a power which 
may will its extinction. Or, if it be said that the influence exer- 
cised over him by his fellow-men cannot be thus dealt with ; the 
answer is, that the power of their will implies the power of his ; 
and that they cannot touch his character except by first obtaining 
the consent of his will. However numerous and powerful the 
agents, then, which co-operate in the formation of my character, 
it must be allowed that I am, at least, one of the agents ; that if 
it is made partly for me, it is also made partly by me. But in- 
asmuch as my constitution includes a power by which I can will 
to influence them, and can, therefore, choose whether or not I 
will be influenced so as to be determined by them, I am more 
than an agent in the formation of my own character. — I am the 
24* 



S82 MAN. 

principal ; and, as such, I am held responsible to the Author of 
my constitution. And all the agencies which approach me pre- 
suppose that I am thus in my own power ; they seek to gain the 
consent of my will. 

18. Thus, primitive man was brought into a constitution of 
things in which every object was calculated and designed to in- 
fluence him, and each to influence him diflerently from all the 
rest. But then he himself was endowed with a constitution 
capable of classifying these objects according to their real impor- 
tance, and of regulating their power over himself accordingly. 
Hence the spirit and design of the primal prohibition. It told 
him, in effect, that he possessed a fixed constitution, including 
the power of self-government, that he stood at the head of cre- 
ated things, and was capable of governing them ; that he must 
not, therefore, allow himself to be governed by them ; and that 
his security, happiness, duty, required that his will should har- 
monize with the Supreme Will ; in a word, that his constitution 
was formed in harmony with the Divine constitution, and could 
find perfection only by voluntary conformity to it. 

19. And here, again, we are reminded of the ideal perfection 
to which reference was made in the corresponding chapters of 
the preceding Treatise. In the present instance, however, the 
subject acquires indefinite interest. For if man have a moral 
constitution answering to the immutable constitution of the 
Divine Being, and if his character is to be the intermediate 
growth and filling up — the conscious and voluntary expansion 
of finite excellence yearning towards the infinite — it follows 
that he will ever have an idea of excellence present to his mind 
which he may be constantly approaching without ever being able 
fully to realize, and that to that ideal standard no two human 
beings will be ever found sustaining precisely the same measure 
of conformity. Even the flower has a type, — that is, the human 
mind conceives of a type, or ideal standard, with which to com- 
pare it ; but, according to which, no specimen is absolutely per- 
fect, nor any two precisely equal. Every kind of animal has 
a type ; and here, the chances, so to speak, that no animal has 
ever reached the standard of absolute animal perfection, and that 
no two of the same kind have ever stood in exactly the same 
relations to it, are still greater ; for they are to be multiplied by 
all the additional laws, and all their possible combinations, which 
characterize the animal as compared with the vegetable econo- 
my. Man also has a type, but that type is Divine, not merely, 
as in the preceding instances, a supposed idea in the Divine 



O 



WELL-BEING. 283 

mind, but the very idea itself of the Di\T[ne character. For 
" God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'' 

Not only can man conceive of that image ; by the laws which 
his God-like constitution involves he can conceive of his own 
closer resemblance to it, and is impelled perpetually to approach 
it. In philosophy, he conceives of truths insusceptible of proof; 
themselves the foundation of all evidence. In science, he can 
conceive of forms incapable of taking sensible representation. 
The pure and absolute geometry of his mind is nowhere reahzed 
in space. In poetry, and in the fine arts generally, however 
much of beauty or perfection he may succeed in expressing, his 
pure idea of it remains unexpressed — a vision which he cannot 
reveal to others. His conception even of the "human face 
divine" is more exalted than any known to have existed in 
nature.* What painter or sculptor, for example, has ever yet 
given a head of " the Man of Sorrows" with which we can rest 
satisfied ? But all these conceptions of ideal excellence are only 
consequences of our being formed in that likeness which com- 
prehends spiritual perfection. And the moral government under 
which man exists is but the ever-present requirement of the 
Infinite, calling, by its laws, on every part of the nature of the 
finite to come nearer to it. His other conceptions of excellence 
he may often feel as if he were close on the verge of realizing ; 
but though he can never feel thus in relation to excellence of 
the highest kind — though the call of that spiritual government 
of which his nature makes him a subject, will be ever becoming 
louder and more urgent — this fact, so far from depressing, ex- 
hilarates and delights him. The conditions of his nature set 
limits to the rapidity of his progress. And so long as he does 
not voluntarily fall below these limits — which would be sin — 
he leaves no occasion for sorrow behind him ; while every on- 
ward step adds to his satisfaction, opens before him a wider 
prospect filled with incentives to advance, and inspires him with 
the ardor of ever-accelerating progress. 

Thus constantly approaching the standard of infinite Perfec- 
tion, he would never sustain, for any measurable length of time, 
precisely the same relation to it. And, for the same reason — 



* TliC facial angle is 80°. The ancient artists not only made it a right 
angle, the Romans went up to 96°, and the Greeks even to 100° ; yet the 
latter is accounted the more beautiful and impressive. The forehead of 
their Jupiter Tonans overhung the face, denoting grandeur and sovereignty 
of mind- 



284 MAN. 

on the supposition that his race had remained in unsinning 
obedience and yet had multiphed — no two of them all would 
have borne, in every respect, the same degree of resemblance 
to it. Every one w^ould come into existence, or would find 
himself placed, in circumstances somewhat differing from those 
of every other member of the human family. This difference, 
looking at the innumerable relations of man's nature, internal 
and external, and the inexhaustible combinations of which they 
are susceptible, admits of interminable variety. And as, from 
the first moment of responsible existence, the capacity of each 
would be put in stress up to the measure of his capacity for 
obedience, every such difference would continue to be exhilDited 
in its relation to the standard of absolute perfection. Not one 
of them all would be insusceptible of being characterized. Each 
would be seen in his way to the goal, but in a different part of 
the course ; and would feel that with a slight difference in his 
previous condition, a corresponding difference in his relative 
position would also have been apparent. 

20. But if by the law^s of his nature unfallen man could con- 
ceive of an ever-growing resemblance to God, he could also 
conceive of an ever-diminishing resemblance to the Divine Image. 
Such a state of retrogression — even the first step in it — would 
be sin. And if even the holy nature of the raee would have 
admitted of endless diversity, what number of ages, what pro- 
cession of generations, could be supposed capable of exhausting 
the diversity of character made possible by sin ? " When man 
had once fallen from virtue, no determinable hmit could be 
assigned to his degradation, nor how far he might descend by 
degrees, and approximate even to the level of the brute ; for as, 
from his origin, he was a being essentially free, he was, in con- 
sequence, capable of change, and even in his organic powers 
most flexible."* If even his likeness to the norma, or Divine 
original, allowed scope for unlimited variety of character, what 
but boundless enormity could be expected to appear when man 
had lost the very model of excellence, and copied only from the 
suggestions of his own mind. Spiritually, he w^ill need to be 
" created anew," to be brought back again to the original type, 
to " the image of him that created him." And in this renewed 
condition, and in all the incalculable variety of stages of which 
it admits, it will be found that restoration to God, and self-resto- 
ration, are identical. Man's resemblance to the standard of all 

* F. Schlegel's Phil, of History, i, p. 48. 



O 



DEPENDENCE. 285 

excellence is in exact proportion to his conformity to tlie laws 
of his being ; and this conformity is the measure of his real 
happiness. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



CONTINGENCE OR DEPENDENCE. 

1. We have seen moral law in its obligation, stability, and 
essential conduciveness to well-being. Before proceedmg to 
remark further on its immutableness, let us take a survey of the 
dependent character of the system to which we belong. For 
" everything created will be found to involve the existence of 
contingent truth" — truth, that is, of which the existence is not 
necessary, but conditional ; truth dependent on something prior. 
We are not the iron-bound victims of Fate. A free Being of 
infinite activity has chosen to create, and to make us at once the 
representatives and the sharers of His own activity. The wide 
realms of space confess His creating presence. He hath sown 
it with worlds. Here, his energy hath expatiated at large, and 
hath called forth a measureless extent of rejoicing activity. The 
cosmical arrangements, in all their masses, distances, collocations, 
and motions ; the terrestrial adaptations to these arrangements ; 
and the physiological adjustments to these adaptations, all confess 
" the good pleasure of His will." And man, by his very power 
of interpreting this confession, receives an intimation that he, 
too, belongs to the same dependent system, and is invited to 
survey the particulars of his dependence. That he should be 
dependent, indeed, is not an optional, but a necessary condition 
of his existence ; that he should be capable of knowing it, is his 
distinction and glory. 

2. Why was man created when he was neither earlier nor 
later ? According to the hypothesis of necessary development, 
life invariably follows its physical conditions. The connection 
is supposed to be fixed, for these natural conditions are regarded 
a>i causes, and the only causes necessary to the production of 
life, so that if the new form of life did not follow the new con- 
dition, this law of natural development would prove a fiction. 
Elsewhere, however, we have shown that such apparent irregu- 



286 MAN. 

larities abound both in the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. 
Neither did the physical conditions of the earth determine the 
moment of man's creation. The fact that his race has continued 
to exist for thousands of years, proves that, as far as physical 
conditions are concerned, he might have safely come into exist- 
ence later ; and there is every reason to conclude that the same 
conditions were sufficiently prepared for his earlier existence. 
True, there was a period prior to which he could not have been 
sustained. Geology shows that during the earlier formations, 
the physical conditions of the globe, and the nature of the ani- 
mals which existed on it, would have been incompatible with 
the existence of the human race. But the same science demon- 
strates that between that period and the time of man's actual 
creation, there was an immeasurable interval, extending over, 
at least, the greater part of the tertiary periods, during which 
there were no such reasons why man might not have existed. 
Species existed then which are existing still ; and the only reason 
which can be assigned why man's first appearance was not coeval 
with theirs, must be sought for in the mind of the Creator. One 
of the lessons taught by the time of liis creation is, that it was 
dependent on more than physical conditions. His " times are 
in Thy hand." 

3. The same is true also respecting man's earliest locality. 
He could not have selected it for himself. Nor is it to be sup- 
posed that the Being who prepared it for him was restricted in 
his choice. " It does not appear that Nature has everywhere 
called organized beings into existence, where the physical con- 
ditions requisite for their life and growth are to be found."* 
Plants, for example, which would have had no existence in a 
country but for human agency, often find the new climate and 
conditions into which they are transported, so congenial to their 
nature, that they rapidly take possession of extensive regions, 
and may even supplant indigenous tribes. The trees of Para- 
dise would doubtless have flourished in many other places besides 
" eastward in Eden." "SVhile experience shows that the human 
constitution has a world-wide adaptation. Indeed, what is the 
globe at large but an Eden prepared for the race ? The relative 
distribution of land and water, and the figure of continents, have 
doubtless influenced the course of the great migrations of the 
human family, and the progress of civilization. But all that 
occasions change in the surface of the planet — the mountain 

* Dr. Prichard's Researches, &c., p. 96. 



r\ 



DEPENDENCE. 287 

chains which divide climates, determine the course of rivers, 
and sustain vegetable worlds of their own; oceanic currents 
affecting the intercourse of nations and developing their intelli- 
gence ; and volcanic forces changing the superficial aspect of 
the globe and strangely mingling its component parts — all these 
are selected and appointed agencies. For even if they are 
referred to a number of permanent causes which have been in 
operation from the beginning ; we can give, scientifically speak- 
ing, no account of the origin of the permanent causes themselves. 
Why these particular natural agents existed' originally and no 
others, or why they are commingled in such and such propor- 
tions, and distributed in such and such a manner throughout 
space, is a question we cannot answer. More than tliis : we 
can discover nothing regular in the distribution itself; we can 
reduce it to no uniformity, to no law. There are no means by 
which, from the distribution of these causes or agents in one 
part of space, we could conjecture whether a similar distribution 
prevails in another."* This witness is true. As long as the 
present constitution and distribution of bodies remain, all their 
relations and sequences will remain. But both their origin and 
their continuance are alike resolvable into the will of Omnipo- 
tence. And He who selected the planet which should become 
the dwelling-place of the human family, selected also the par- 
ticulai' spot which the newly-created parent of the race should 
occupy. 

4. Proofs of contingency pervade the constitution of man. 
His bodily configuration is specific. No theory of development 
from pre-existing species accounts for it. That it should neither 
more nor less resemble any of the myriads of animal bodies by 
which it is surrounded than it does, is owing solely to the choice 
of the Creator. We say choice ; for, doubtless, the Divine de- 
cision is regulated by reasons worthy of infinite wisdom ; and, 
as such, equally removed from caprice on the one hand, and 
from a blind necessity on the other. The pleasures of appetite 
also have been the subject of the appointing will of God. 
Herbs and water might have been the only articles of human 
food, as they are of some of the animal tribes. But in appoint- 
ing otherwise, what complicated foresight and invention were 
necessaiy in the construction of all those substances we use for 
food ; and what exquisite workmanship, not merely in those 
parts of our body destined to receive pleasure from them, but in 

* MiU's Logic, i. 417 ; u. 45. 



288 MAN. 

the whole system to be supported by them. So also respecting 
the nerves of sense ; each is endowed with a different kind of 
sensibility, demonstrating that this property does not inhere in 
them necessarily. Nor can physiology discover any difference 
between them to account for the difference of function ; leaving 
us to infer that the arrangement, as far as the properties of ner- 
vous matter are concerned, is purely arbitrary, and for a defi- 
nite purpose. But further, the sentient faculties, thus specially 
constituted, are susceptible only within certain limits. The air 
did not produce the ear, nor the light the eye ; any more than 
the ear and the eye produced the air and the light. For the 
vibrations of the air, which seem in themselves no more calcu- 
lated to produce sound than to produce smell, do not operate 
universally ; if the vibrations either exceed or fall below a cer- 
tain number in a second, they do not produce sound. And how 
remarkable that the rate of vibration to which the human ear is 
adapted, should be that which the human voice is calculated to 
produce ! If Hght is produced by the vibrations of ether, it is 
only within certain narrow limits that they effect the eye with 
the sense of color. In all this we have the results of compli- 
cated and refined contrivance ; certainly nothing like a material 
necessity. To say that the nerves must needs have a constitu- 
tion of some kind, leaves the cause of their actual constitution 
unexplained. To say that the prior constitution of the globe 
required that man should be adapted to it, only presents us with 
two systems of contrivances to be accounted for instead of one. 
The former, so far from explaining the latter, only doubles the 
mystery. The prior conditions of the globe were themselves 
contingent, and require to be accounted for. Their continuance 
cannot change them into causes ; they are mere conditions still. 
The body of the first man took them up, and employed them in 
a manner which showed that the Designer of the one was the 
Former of the other. With how solemn an emphasis might he 
have said, " A body hast Thou prepared me." " In Thy book 
all my members were delineated, when as yet there was none 
of them." 

Equally dependent on the choice of the Creator is the consti- 
tution of the world in which He has placed us. According to the 
ablest reports of astronomy, neither of the planets appears 
strictly to resemble it. Earth is a specific place for a specific 
race of beings. A slight change in our constitution would 
make us unfit for this world, for we should be receiving from it 
impressions which it was not meant to impart. A slight change 



O 



DEPENDENCE. 289 

in the constitution of the world would be unsuited to us ; for it 
would be producing impressions which we were not designed to 
receive. Our nature, and the world which surrounds it, are ar- 
tificially adapted to each other. 

And thus the kind of knoivledge we are to receive, as far as it 
depends on external nature, was appointed by God before we 
were called into existence ; for the world was arranged and 
awaited our arrival, and our constitution was configured to it. 
Every object around us expresses a divine idea ; and has been 
devised and placed before us to awaken a -similar idea in our 
minds. Everything in creation js a material sign, by which He 
seeks to convey the thing signified into our minds ; so that our 
natural knowledge is just the acquisition of such ideas as he has- 
deemed fit for us, and has then chosen that external nature 
should represent and suggest to us. 

7. Equally does the maximum of our knowledge depend on 
the Divine predetermination. That is to say, the same hand 
which has selected the kind, has also limited the number of ob- 
jects by which we should be surrounded ; limited the avenues 
of sensation to five ; and has thus restricted our natural know- 
ledge to the results of the mind operating on these sensations. 
True it is, that even within these limitations,^ the means of 
knowledge are inexhaustible. But still the restFtctiori is spe- 
(5ial ; and entirely an object of the Divine choice. Had the 
Creator seen fit, the materials of knowledge might have been 
indefinitely increased. The members of the human race, if 
obedient, might have been successively introduced into new 
worlds, where such increase actually existed. Restored man 
will probably become the inhabitant of such enlarged spheres. 
But probationary man is located where everything is adapted to 
his probationary state. The means are chosen for a chosen 
end. We might call attention to the regularity of external na- 
ture, and to the confident expectation of the mind respecting it. 
What would that natural constancy avail unless it were re- 
sponded to by an anticipation previously in our minds ? It is 
" the concurrence, the contingent harmony of these two elements, 
the exquisite adaptation of the objective to the subjective," which 
reveals the dependence of both on the will of the Creator. 

8. The entire economy of the world without was the special 
arrangement ©f the Supreme Will to suit the freedom of a created 
will, under obligation to obey it ; and all the other functions of 
the human mind were made to harmonize with the same special 
characteristic of man. A slight change in either the subjective 

25 



290 MAN. 

or the objective economy — the depression of a single power 
within, or the withdrawal of certain classes of objects without — 
might leave the will to act without adequate motives ; while the 
exaltation of one of our mental faculties, or the introduction to 
our notice of a new class of objects, might have the effect of de- 
throning or overbearing the will, and of thus impairing or de- 
stroying our accountability. Now all the creative operations 
were arranged with a special view to that balance of influence 
from without, and of powers and susceptibilities within, which 
is essential to a being destined to illustrate and appreciate the 
Divine character. All those contrivances and collocations of 
means, which we have elsewhere traced to the Divine Wisdom, 
are special inventions for this end. All the illustrations of 
Goodness are rich and varied donations designed for the same 
purpose. And all the laws and moral an'angements, to which 
we have pointed in illustration of Holiness, here find their 
issue. 

9. We have already spoken of man as a dependent immortal. 
Necessarily immortal he cannot be ; the conditions of his nature 
forbid it, for he is a creature. Physically immortal he is, for 
he is a responsible creature, and accountableness implies a per- 
petuity of existence. This supposes that the Creator might 
have withheld the mighty boon ; but he has been pleased to 
make the gift of existence irreversible. No length of possess- 
ion, however, will ever change its dependent character, or ren- 
der it an independent power. Through every point of duration 
it will require to be upheld by Him " Avho only hath immortal- 
ity" as a self-existence. 

10. Such is a glance at the multitudinous contingencies, sub- 
jective and objective, which met in the first man, considered 
co-existently. Let us look at the same classes of contingencies 
and arrangements as successively existent. In doing this, we 
quit creation considered as a Divine act, and we enter the do- 
main of Providence. Creation is the universe considered only 
in its relation to space ; Providence regards it as related to time 
also. The moment creation ended in reference to man, the 
reign of Providence commenced. Providence selected the lo- 
cality of Paradise. And, when the creating hand had fashion- 
ed him. Providence led him into the garden of Eden, where, 
before, it had planted every tree that was good for food, and 
had brought together every object which was proper to meet 
his sense. None but works from the Divine hand were to meet 
his eye ; and, that he might certainly know his dependence on 



r^ 



DEPENDENCE. 291 

God, he was to receive some of his blessings from that hand 
direct. Such, especially, was the divine arrangement in the 
method selected for the creation of one who should be a help- 
meet for him. And such appears to have been the special de- 
sign, both of the divine grant, and the divine prohibition, in re- 
lation to the fruits of the U-ees of the garden. All the phe- 
nomena of the universe, from the first creative volition to the 
moment which beheld the first man standing in the shade of the 
tree of life, presented a collection of appointed objects and 
events, the wisely and benevolently arranged production of 
" Him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." 
The entire series depended from the throne of God. 

11. Of this dependence, man could not be allowed to remain 
ignorant, nor to lose sight, without in so far frustrating the de- 
sign of creation, and therefore of his own existence. And yet 
this point, which it was so important to secure, was the point at 
which danger was to be the most apprehended ; and simply and 
obviously for this reason, that it was the point of coincidence 
between the human will and the Divine. God had willed that 
man should be a free agent, but this very freedom of man's 
will involved the possibility that he would lose sight of the fact 
that the entire arrangement depended on another will. The 
consciousness that he himself was a subordinate cause, was the 
very thing which, while it called for his deepest gratitude as 
constituting his chief glory, was in danger of veiling the Prime 
cause of the whole from his view. His consciousness of sub- 
jective independence as a free agent, which was yet essential 
to his freedom, was in danger of concealing from his view his 
objective dependence, the conviction of which was yet essential 
to his virtue, for it was simply the perception of the relation in 
which he stood to God, accompanied with the corresponding af- 
fection of the mind. Now, in no respect, perhaps, was danger 
to be apprehended from this quarter more than in the question 
of man's regular sustenance. The constant recurrence of ap- 
petite, connected with the constant presence of the food which 
was to gratify it, M'as in imminent danger of concealing the 
benevolence which originated both, especially, too, when it is 
considered that the only Hnk in the chain of causation which 
man saw was one consciously supplied by himself, — namely, 
the volition by which he put forth his hand and appropriated 
the food to himself. 

12. Now, as if to keep constantly ahve man's sense of de- 
pendence, the Creator gave him to miderstand that he held 



292 MAN. 

everything that was good for food by a special grant from the 
Divine Bounty. And as if to intimate the quarter from which 
the danger was to be chiefly apprehended, He laid a prohibition 
on one particular tree. The grant of all the rest was only in 
harmony with other acts by which God had signified to man 
the great lesson of his dependence. The solemn prohibition 
of this, was as if the Creator aimed to concentrate the whole 
doctrine of dependence in a single sentence, and to give it a 
locality and a visible form. It was as if He had said to his 
creature, " I give you the wide scope of paradise as the theatre 
of your wall. But, then, you are to remember that / give it 
you ; that this is the arrangement of my Sovereign will. Not 
only is it important that you should bear this in mind as a fact, 
the knowledge of which (as mere knowledge) is as important 
as the knowledge of any other fact : it is important as a fact, of 
which you cannot lose sight, without your losing the most pre- 
cious part of your happiness, and my losing the glory which is 
due unto my name. Such is the constitution of your nature ; 
and it is the only constitution which I could give you ; for it is 
not within the compass, even of omnipotence, to erect you into 
absolute independence. By necessity of nature you are a de- 
pendent creature ; nor could I connive at your ignorance or 
forgetfulness of this essential truth without patronizing the most 
prolific of all falsehoods. While your will, then, is allowed to 
range through the wide circumference of paradise at pleasure, 
I give you to understand that my will shall occupy a central 
spot — shall be enthroned in the midst. To attempt to occupy 
that spot, therefore, will be to bring your will into collision with 
my will. To violate my will in that only particular in which 
I propose to take from you a formal acknowledgment of your 
dependence, will be an overt attempt at independence. In that 
case, it is consistent with justice that you should be made to 
know that your well-being is in my hands. Hear, therefore, my 
ordination, " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
die." Thus, a twofold object was secured, the supremacy of 
the Divine will was asserted, and the freedom of man's will was 
respected. Man was taught his dependence on the will of God 
by the very means which informed him of the power of his own 
will. 

13. But all this relates only to man's objective dependence. 
Was his subjective nature equally dependent on the will of God 
for its successive existence and operations ? It can be easily 
conceived that the selection of a particular object for prohibi- 



O 



DEPENDENCE. . 293 

tion, and even the possible change of that one object for another, 
was an arrangement entirely contingent on the will of God ; but 
in what sense can constant dependence be predicated of man's 
subjective constitution? First, is he entirely passive in the 
hand of God ? This would represent the Creator as the only 
agent in the universe, and the creation of man as only the pro- 
duction of an additional machine. Is he, then, secondly, to be 
regarded in the light of an instrument rendered independent of 
the Divine agency, except after the lapse of particular intervals, 
when he may need rectification ? Still, this would only seem to 
represent him as a machine somewhat superior to that which he 
appears to be in the preceding theory. The third, and the true, 
theory, appears to be that which regards the Almighty as main- 
taining, by constant volition, the laws which his will originally 
gave to created objects. According to this view, a distinction 
is made between the physical power of willing and acting, and 
the uses which man makes of that power. For the power it- 
self, he is always dependent on the continuance of the Divine 
will to that effect. That is to say, the Creator willed in our 
creation that such and such operations of our mind should inva- 
riably show us things as they are, harmonize with those things, 
and conduce to our happiness. The fact that they did so at 
first, proves that He willed it ; and the fact that they continue 
to do so, proves that He continues to will to that effect. In 
the same way, events disclosed that in the constitution of the 
first man the Creator had willed that under given circum- 
stances his sensations, thoughts, emotions, conscience, will, 
should all tend to right action ; that in certain other circum- 
stances they would end in wron^ action ; and that God contin- 
ued to will this physical power of man's nature irrespective of 
the consequences likely to ensue ; or, without interfering with 
man's free agency. The same will which originated the laws 
of man's constitution continued to maintain them in operation. 
So that man was as immediately dependent on the Divine will 
for the second moment of his existence as he was for tiie first, 
or, as he was dependent for the Vohtion to which he owed his 
origination. Nor did his dependence at all diminish with the 
continued operation of the laws of his nature. They could not 
exist by habit. They had momently to be renewed. That he 
was at all, and that he was naturally, what he was, was, at every 
point of time, dependent on the will of God. In Him, he lived, 
and moved, and had his being. 

14. It is only consistent with this view, or explanatory of it, 
25* 



294 MAN. 

to add, that the influence of the Divine volition in sustaining 
man's physical, intellectual, and moral constitution in being, 
would doubtless correspond with the particular nature of these 
respective parts. That is to say, the agency which sustained 
the physical part would differ from that which sustained the 
moral, as much as these parts themselves differ from each other. 
Now the voluntary state of man's mind answering to this 
constant physical dependence, was that of grateful moral or 
spiritual obligation to God. Man could not recognize the fact 
that everything within him was dependent for its susceptibilities 
and powers on the will of God ; and that everything without 
him was dependent for its existence, and for its adaptation to 
his powers and susceptibilities, on the same will, without being 
conscious of constant and entire physical dependence on God ; 
and this is a devotional spirit, the essence of prayer. And, 
then, it is to be remembered that the acts and affections of the 
mind flowing from this state, (leading to, and consisting of 
communion with God,) would tend to increase the creature's 
sense of dependence on God. By the mere physical or natural 
arrangement of man's constitution, he was made to be more 
affected by the character and presence of God, than by the 
presence of any other external object; and to be the more 
affected by them, the more they engaged his attention. By a 
providential arrangement, many things were appointed to remind 
him of God, and of his own dependence on Him — such as the 
appointment of the sabbath, the creation of woman, and the 
prohibition of a particular act. But if, besides, there existed 
then, as now, (and there did exist) a distinct moral arrange- 
ment, by which God and the creature mutually approached in 
communion, the one to acknowledge his dependence in acts of 
gratitude and adoration, the other to return these acts in dona- 
tions of sustaining and ennobling spiritual influence, man was per- 
vaded and surrounded by means and motives for Jiving a life of 
faith in his Creator and Preserver. 

■ 15. Thus the constitution of man was completed, and the 
human dispensation commenced. Every line of it was held in 
the hand of the Creator, and dependent for its continuance in 
being on his will. Whatever modifications his providence might 
see fit to introduce, were as contingent on the good pleasure of 
his will as the modification of the preceding animal economy 
was by the introduction of the present. By instituting the new 
laws, he had not parted with the prerogative of legislation, but 
had rather proclaimed it. He will not impeach his equity in 



^ 



ULXniATE FACTS. 295 

the administration of the new economy ; He cannot forfeit his 
sovereignty — that is, his eternal and unalienable right to main- 
tain his equity, or to illustrate it hy whatever new manifestations 
He please. For the present, however, the great mediatorial 
work of creation is completed ; and He, by whom all things had 
been made, beheld in his creature, man, the manifestation, so 
far, of the Divine All-sufficiency. 



CHAPTER XV. 



ULTIMATE PACTS. 



1. From the contingent let us ascend to the ultimate. For 
if man be thus directly dependent on the will of the Creator, 
we may expect to find that his constitution discloses ultimate 
facts. As it is made up of parts mutually dependent, we may 
be able to trace signs of the connection through two or three 
links of the chain. But presently we come to a fact which, for 
us, is ultimate ; a point where each part passes out of view, and 
merges in the will of the Creator. Even the manner in which 
these two or three hnks are connected, is itself an ultimate 
fact — is not derivable from, nor explicable by, anything of the 
same kind — admits of no physical solution. 

2. It is here important to remark that the term law itself, as 
applied to the processes of nature, denotes properly an ultimate 
fact. So far from explaining phenomena, it is only a name for 
the thing to be explained. '• A law of nature is a thing con- 
ceived, and not a thing that [objectively] exists ; and, therefore, 
can neither act, nor be acted upon." * " It has relation to us 
as understanding, rather than to the materials of which the 
universe consists as obeying, certain rules." f It impHes a Law- 
giver, and denotes his purpose to act according to a certain 
rule. All that we see are its mere manifestations. 

3. The misapplication of the word, then, is still greater when 
it is employed as equivalent to cause. In this case, there is 
more than the concealment of a difficulty; there is also the 

* Sir W. Hamilton's Edition of Keid's Works, p. 66. 
t Sir X Herschell's Nat. Phil^ § 27. 



296 MAN. 

interpolation of an error. " What is called explaining one law 
of nature by another, is but substituting one mystery for 
another ; and does nothing to render the course of nature other 
than mysterious. We can no more assign a ichy for the more 
extensive laws than for the partial ones. The explanation may 
substitute a mystery which has become familiar, and has grown 
to seem not mysterious, for one which is still strange. And this 
is the meaning of explanation in common parlance. The laws 
thus explained, or resolved, are sometimes said to be accounted 
for ; but the expression is incorrect, if taken to mean anything 
more than what has been already stated." * Yet the ordinary fal- 
lacy is, that to discover the law of a sequence — the mere fact 
that one thing precedes another — is to discover its efficient 
cause ; and that, having discovered this proximate antecedent, 
no other antecedent need be thought of; that the discoverer has 
taken it out of the hand of God, and of mystery, at the same 
time ; whereas, not only is the law where it was before in rela- 
tion to the Lawgiver, but the mystery is often numerically 
doubled — the discovery being the unveiling of a new mystery. 
Sometimes we even hear of " an explanation of the laws which 
govern the phenomena of nature." But as, strictly speaking, 
the laws of nature is a phrase which, taken objectively, denotes 
only the uniformities existing among natural phenomena, so to 
speak of these uniformities as if they were producing, regula- 
ting, or governing powers — governing, that is, anything more 
than our anticipations — is obviously absurd. They simply 
presuppose such powers, and are their manifestations. They 
are only according to law, and therefore are not produced by it. 
Laws are not causes, but their consequences. 

4. In treating on the facts of nature, then, there are at least 
three courses open in relation to their laws ^nd causes ; to 
admit the hypothetical existence of an original cause, a primor- 
dial necessity, which, as it has no longer anything to do with 
the universe, is to be studiously kept out of view, and nothing 
to be spoken of but inherent forces, and their effects ; or to dis- 
miss this hypothesis of a primordial necessity as a relic of su- 
perstition, and to sink all idea even of abstract forces as causes 
of phenomena, attending only to the observation of facts, and 
the laws of their development; or to admit that the same 
intelligent Will which originated the universe, maintains it in 
operation, not, indeed, by unconnected acts of power, but by a 

* Mil's Logic, i. pp. 559, 560. 



o 



i 



ULTIMATE FACTS. 297 

constant regular volition, acting according to conditionally estab- 
lished laws. 

0. Of the first course, the distinguished author of " Kosmos" 
may be regarded as a representative. In his hands, " physical 
science limits itself to the explanation of the phenomena of the 
material world by the properties of matter " — that is, by forces 
inherent in matter according to an occult primordial necessity. 
The moral, as well as the material systems, according to this 
view, compose one piece of iron mechanism, wound up from 
time to time, to go for a longer or shorter period, but all moral 
freedom is denied to the subjects of it ; nor is any recognized 
even in the occult Necessity which puts it into motion. What 
the author would think of the moral honesty of a number of 
reviewers who should analyze his work, and should descant on 
its vivid pictures of nature, command of language, and richness 
of illustration, without a single distinct recognition of its author- 
ship, we know not. But here is a method of philosophizing 
which virtually and complacently ignores the Author of the 
universe. Effects are resolved into the forces of nature ; and 
the mind, thus put off with a word, in the stead of a thing, is to 
suppose that it has received an adequate explanation, and trains 
itself to rest satisfied with it. Mind alone, the mind of a 
Humboldt, can trace the laws of these forces, but no reference 
whatever is to be made to any Mind as creating and superin- 
tending them ; in other words, merely to perceive them is a proof 
of mind sufficient to make the world resound with its fame, but 
to make them has so little to do with Mind that the world is to 
preserve a death-like silence respecting it. The mind of the 
observer, too, is conscious of moral freedom, conscious that he 
is the regulating power of his own actions, but the system 
assures him that this is false, that he is a compelled portion of 
a vast machine without choice or option : that is to say, he is to 
confide in his senses, but not in his consciousness ; or, he is to 
rely on the truth of what consciousness attests respecting the 
external Avorld, but to disbelieve its testimony respecting the 
world within : its atfirmations respecting that which is not itself, 
matter, are to be accepted ; but those which relate to itself, 
and on which the truth of the others depend, are to be discred- 
ited. 

6. Of the second method, M. Comte is, at present, the great 
advocate. According to him, philosophy, dismissing all theolog- 
ical and metaphysical ideas, all thought of supernatural powers 
and of natural forces, must confine itself simply to the outward 



298 MAN. 

observation of facts and their laws. All notion of causation is to 
be repudiated not merely as hopeless, but absurd, and the only- 
kind of explanation to be thought of is that which resolves phe- 
nomena into laws more and more general, till the whole shall 
attain the unity of a single fact. Such is the materialism of the 
so-called positive philosophy. Now this method is open to all 
the objections just stated (for the idea of some mechanical cause 
or power, is, in reality, concealed under the word law), and to 
additional objections of its own. According to this view, it is 
hopeless to ascertain causes, and therefore they are to be treated 
as non-existent ; as if the human mind were the measure of truth 
and existence ; or as if the existence of causation depended on 
our ability to explain it. Let it be supposed, however, that the 
positive philosophy should go on enlarging its domain of law, 
until it has reduced all the phenomena of the universe, by one 
vast generalization, to the operation of a single fact. What then ? 
When a second Newton shall have succeeded in elaborating and 
including all the results of experimental philosophy in a single 
proposition, what is to follow? Will the mind have lost its 
occupation ? Will it henceforth be doomed to inactivity as a 
reward ? It will have reached " its pride of place" simply by 
persevering inquiry. Each new generalization in succession 
will have appeared in answer to the question. What law is the 
antecedent to this ? and what to this ? and so on till the last 
emerges. And what is to stop the inquirer from then looking 
over the boundary-line of the physical into the region of the 
spiritual, and asking for the next antecedent there ? A law of his 
nature, a necessity of his being, has impelled him to repeat the 
question hitherto, and, unless his constitution be unmade, he will 
continue to repeat the question — for it is not an affair subject 
to his will — until an intelligent First Cause be recognized, or 
nature demonstrates that it is self-made. And most worthy of 
remembrance it is, as an " assured truth, and a conclusion of 
experience (says Bacon) that, in the entrance of philosophy, 
when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do 
offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, 
it may induce some oblivion of the Highest cause ; but when a 
man passeth on further, and seeth the dependence of causes, 
and the works of Providence ; then, according to the allegory 
of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of Na- 
ture's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair."* 

^ Advancement of Learning, B. I. This sagacious truth is admi- 
rably developed and illustrated in Dr. Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, 
B. III. c. vi. 



O 



ULTIMATE FACTS. 299 

The positive philosophy, occupying itself in the observation of 
facts, and in the verification of laws already known, resembles a 
person so completely engrossed in deciphering the letters of an 
ancient inscription, as to be quite oblivious of the agency which 
originally produced it ; but he who succeeds in interpreting 
word after word till the meaning of the entire sentence flashes 
on his mind, feels at that moment as if brought into close com- 
munion with the mind which first conceived it. 

7. In harmony with the third method which we have indicated, 
we have elsewhere shown* (beginning with matter), that, in 
answer to the question, " What is its nature ?" we may exhibit 
it chemically resolved into elements beyond which we cannot 
decompose it. But not even in the last analysis can we dis- 
cover in it anything which accounts for its own origination. By 
a law of our nature, we feel as deeply convinced that we are 
examining a thing which has been caused, as if we had been 
permitted to look on it in the first moment of its existence. We 
have spoken of it not merely as being, but as continuing : not 
merely as related to space, or co-existent, but also as related to 
time, or successively existent. All its parts are in motion. At- 
traction, repulsion, transformation, change of physical relations, 
are constant and universal. But when we have traced back 
these changes in any particular class of natural phenomena, in 
the order in which they occur, to the highest and earHest in the 
series, we find that it includes nothing to account for its own 
existence. A primary conviction assures us that the continu- 
ance of the world, no less than its origination, has its ground in 
a cause external to itself. 

8. Ascending from the chemistry and mechanics of inorganic 
nature to the vegetable kingdom, we next inquired. What is life ? 
or. What is the principle which unites all the functions of an 
organized body in the single result called life ? The physiologist 
may be able to describe the organization in which life is devel- 
oped, may trace the organization to the seed, and search the 
very elements of the seed itself, but he can find nothing there 
to account for the origination of a living organific power. 
Even if he could artificially imitate the cells or globules of 
organic life, still they themselves would be inorganic globules. 
The very absence of the vital power shows that it is something 
distinct from form, as well as from mere elementary composi- 
tion, though it may employ and subordinate both. He sees the 

* Pre- Adamite Earth, pp. 77, 168, 246. 



300 MAN. 

phenomena of life only after it has begun to work. Life it- 
self is presupposed and ultimate. But besides existing as an 
object, in relation to space, life is manifested in an orderly 
series of processes, or in relation to time. In tracing these 
sequences, we find a series of laws, each of which is related to 
all the rest, and all of which refer us to a cause of which they 
are only the results, and the means of manifestation. One of 
the first discoveries made by those who vainly attempt to 
resolve the phenomena of life into the operation of physical 
agents is, that they must be allowed to indulge in the incon- 
sistency of supposing a principle not physical, in order even to 
begin to work out their theory. For a time, the vital principle 
was the popular hypothesis ; but this was a principle which, as 
it did not belong to the domain of physiology, was the very 
phenomenon which required explanation. The only conclusion 
warranted is, that the origination of Ufe, and its continuance, 
alike point to a Life-giving Cause. 

The regularity of the organic functions, so far from denoting 
the absence of the Great Agent, is the very circumstance which 
indicates his presence. Order is natural to Him. We cannot 
conceive of His agency apart from it. Nor do the organic 
processes grow less dependent by continuance^ as if they could 
acquire self-sufficiency by the lapse of time. They can never 
become other than the mere means of the manifestation of an 
independent and anterior power. But, it may be asked, do not 
the structural malformations which we occasionally witness 
seem to intimate that the organic laws are left to themselves? 
The sufficient answer is, that, in such instances, we only behold 
the arrest or displacement of one law by another ; or, according 
to Divine appointment. Not this departure from a type, there- 
fore, but the non-departure from it, would, under the circum- 
stances, be a sign that the organic laws were abandoned to 
themselves. And then, also, the theory which assumes the of- 
fice of reheving the Divine Being from the seeming discredit of 
a partial failure of his laws in his own presence, and from the 
supposed indignity of having to perform certain creating and sus- 
taining acts of an inferior description, only disguises or adjourns 
the imaginary difficulty. For, by saying that the universe is 
evolved and upheld by general laws appointed at first, and never 
afterwards interfered with, the supposed difficulty is left to press 
against the original appointment. Unless it be supposed that, in 
originating the law, the Deity was putting a power into opera- 
tion of which He knew not the effects, all the results actually 



r^ 



ULTIMATE FACTS. 301 

flowing from it must have been originally contemplated by Him ; 
so that the hypothesis which presumes to save the dignity of the 
God of Providence, does it at the expense of the honor of the 
God of Creation. 

9. Crossing the gulf between organic life and sentient exist- 
ence, w^e have also inquired into the mystery of sensation. What 
is the principle of a sense ? How is it that, by the aid of its 
nervous system, the animal can become acquainted apparently 
not only with impressions, but with things ; with the forms, and 
qualities, and motions of objects ? " We know exactly the 
mechanism of the eye (remarks Liebig), but neither anatomy 
nor chemistry will ever explain how the rays of light act on con- 
sciousness, so as to produce vision." Nor w-ill physiology or 
acoustics ever explain why the vibration of the air, acting on the 
drum of the ear, should produce the sensation of hearing. And 
the same is true of every class of sensations. The organ of 
sense contains nothing to explain the sensation. They are two 
things essentially distinct. In every attempt at explanation, we 
have to presuppose a principle, to introduce the idea of some 
antecedent capable of sensation. 

10. Our examination of instinct introduces us to^ another ulti- 
mate fact. However the various classes of animal actions may 
be distributed, there is one class — including, for example, the 
beautiful nest-building of birds, and the mathematical cell-build'- 
ing of bees — which is allowed on almost all hands, to be strictly 
instinctive. Now their organization does not determine their 
instincts ; for, with the same organs, we see very different,, and 
even opposite, instincts in different species of animals. Neither 
do their instincts nor propensities determine their organization, 
for their structure is prospective : the bird has wings while yet 
in the egg. Instinct, then, as far as the animal structure is con- 
cerned, is an ultimate fact. The bee itself, while working 
geometrically, has no knowledge of geometry ; " somewhat hke 
a child, who, by turning the handle of an organ, makes good 
music without any knowledge of music. The art is not in the 
child, but in him who made the organ. In like manner, the 
geometry is not in the bee, but in that great Geometrician who 
made the bee, and who ' maketh all things in number, weight, 
and measure.' " 

11. What is mind'^ We have seen that organized matter is 
only the condition or means of its manifestation.* The phe- 

* Chap. VI., supm. 
26 



302 MAN. 

nomena of matter are all learned bj outward observation; 
those of the mind by consciousness alone. The material phe- 
nomena which observation brings to light are only, at most, 
instruments and organs, while consciousness reveals a force or 
cause capable of controlling some of these organs. Material 
properties and processes can be conceived of only as related to 
space ; the utter absurdity of conceiving of the mind as sus- 
taining any such relation is felt as soon as it is attempted. 
Matter is divisible ; even the brain, the instrument of mind, is 
made up of parts; the mind itself is consciously indivisible, 
one. The brain is constantly wasting and renewing ; the 
mind is ever identical ; the man is ever conscious that he is 
the same being. The material organ grows weary, and asks 
for rest ; the untiring will pities the infirmity while yielding to 
the demand, and often pictures what it could accomplish with 
boundless scope for its designs, and an organization incapable 
of fatigue with which to carry them out. The relation of mind 
to matter is of a nature still further to illustrate the essential 
distinction between the two. For we have seen abundant 
evidence to conclude that the brain, besides bein^ nothinor 
more than the condition of the mind's action, is only the in- 
adequate instrument of that activity, and not its standard ; 
that while certain functions of the body constantly proceed 
without the mind being at all conscious of them, the mind also 
has certain properties and activities quite independent of all 
cerebral sympathy : and that as matter is independent of any 
specific organized form, so mind is capable of existing apart 
from its present material instrument, and is, by the will of God, 
indestructible. The mind, then, is a distinct entity, and its 
constitution is an ultimate fact, or, rather, a revelation of many 
such facts. 

12. What is the ground of our belief m the existence of the 
material universe? Both the sceptic and the idealist very 
readily admit the fact that our consciousness testifies to an ex- 
ternal world. But how do we know the truth of this testimony ? 
"Why do we believe that what we apprehend as an external ob- 
ject is not a state or mode of our own mind, illusively presenting 
itself as a mode of matter ? We believe it on the authority of 
consciousness. This is our ultimate appeal. We have the 
same kind of proof of the existence of the external object as we 
have of the thinking and percipient subject — that of conscious- 
ness. Deny its authority for the object, and it cannot be relied 
on for the subject. Question the truth of its testimony, and even 



O 



ULTIMATE FACTS. 803 

the fact that it testifies must be doubted. And to doubt this, is 
to subvert doubt itself. In a word, our inabihty to test the truth 
of our consciousness is owing to its ultimate authority. Did it 
admit of proof, we might then require to test the validity of that 
which proved it, and so on in infinite regression. To reason on 
the ultimate reason \s felo-de-se, or makes reasoning itself impos- 
sible ; for, as Aristotle often repeats, the elements of demonstra- 
tion must be themselves indemonstrable. 

13. How is man's existence, or that of the world which he 
inhabits, to be accounted for ? or what is causation ? That he 
could not begin to exist without a cause, we regard as a neces- 
sary truth. That causation includes something more than an- 
tecedence and consequence, a mere relation of time, we are 
conscious, by the effort we put forth in merely effecting the 
movement of our limbs. And then as the very idea of sequence 
refers us back from effect to cause till we reach the first link in 
the physical chain, the mind feels with the force of an intellectual 
necessity, that the pre-existing cause of. the whole must have 
been of a nature corresponding with the effects, and must there- 
fore include more than mere antecedence. Causality itself, indeed, 
cannot be detected. It is not a thing to be seen. The things 
observed do not obtrude it. It is not in them except as an in- 
visible energy or presence. Gravitation itself is not a cause, 
but a law. The highest aim of natural philosophy is to ascend 
from one antecedent to another, until it has reached the last or 
most general phenomenon. But even if this last were reached, 
and natural philosophy were complete, we could not lay our 
finger on an efficient cause, although we had been tacitly pre- 
supposing it at every step of the inquiry. In muscular action 
we are conscious of making an effort ; and here, if anywhere, 
we might expect to be able to explain the connection between 
the two ; but how our will affects our muscles is a secret hidden 
from us. Still the fact of causation remains. And the only 
and ultimate fact upon which the mind reposes respecting the 
causation of man, and of every phenomenon of nature, is that 
of the Divine volition.* 

14. That man himself is a cause, and his character, conse- 
quently a self -formation, is, in the same sense, an ultimate fact. 
We have seen that he is dependent upon God in a two-fold 
respect ; both as having derived his existence from Him, and 
as being maintained in existence by His pervading physical 

* Tappan's Elements of Logic, Part III., b. ii. § 8. 



304 ' MAN. 

agency, or ever-present volition to that effect. This dependence 
is neither optional nor avoidable. It is not the mere consequence 
of Divine omnipotence. If man exists, dependence is the in- 
separable condition of his existence. Even his power to sin, 
physically considered, is a dependent power. His created con- 
stitution can never become physically independent of its Creator. 
This dependence of spirit on spirit, however, does not appear 
to be so incompatible with the liberty of the will as the fact that 
man is subject also to the laws of matter. His life, as far as it 
is material, has its root in mechanical arrangements. But the 
mechanism of nature, we have seen, is not inherently hostile to 
spiritual freedom. It is not the product of a power alien to 
God and man. It is made by the Maker of man, and is to move 
in subordination to Him. If, indeed, the question were, How 
is unlimited or unconditioned freedom compatible with the 
mechanism of material nature ? no reply could be given. To 
reconcile law with lawlessness is impossible. But such freedom 
is utterly inconceivable. Law is the correlative of liberty, not 
its antithesis. The freedom of a finite being such as man, is 
confined within the bounds of a limited circle. "Within this 
space, and as long as he continues to will in harmony with the 
true freedom of his constitution, his liberty and his well-being 
are one. The objective laws which surround his will do but 
expound, defend, and enlarge his liberty. They influence his 
will only owing to their " own exceeding lawfulness." If he 
will, however, he is free to resist law ; but then he surrenders a 
portion of liberty with each violation. Just as he possesses the 
power to amputate one of his limbs after another, only he must 
expect to find that he has abridged that power by every such 
unnatural act. If man wills to assert his freedom, his power 
over himself, by selling himself into slavery, he can do so. And 
if he choose to convince himself of his liberty by resisting law, 
the first law which he arms against himself, is the law of liberty ; 
he comes into collision with his own nature at the first step. ' By 
resisting the highest class of motives, he excludes from his circle 
of freedom the whole domain of piety. The violation of the 
law of the benevolent affections, still further contracts the circle. 
By disregarding his own well-being, and thus violating the law 
of self-love, he reduces the circle to a still smaller compass. 
He surrenders himself to the sensitive gratification of the present 
moment. He no longer gives law to the objective ; the objective 
gives law to him. He has approached, as nearly as his consti- 
tution will permit, to the condition of a machine. And in pro- 



ULTIMATE FACTS. 305 

portion as he has descended to this point, his very reduced range 
of actions has become more and more calculable and fixed. He 
is then fallaciously pointed at as a triumphant proof of a fatalistic 
materialism. And if a number of such herd together in a state 
of society favorable to sensuality, exposing a wide surface to 
objective influences, the statistics of crime will be found to be so 
calculable, and susceptible of classification, as to tempt the ma- 
terialist to believe that his argument is complete. He has made 
the mistake of going to the hospital for the statistics of health. 
Yet such is the pervading error of more than one popular pub- 
lication on the condition and prospects of man. 

We have remarked, however, that all law, whether express- 
ed directly by the Divine Being, or indirectly in the mechanism 
of nature, is really and truly one with the law of man's freedom. 
" But is he not even in his holiest and freest condition, influ- 
enced by motives ?" Doubtless, it is this fact, partly, which dis- 
tinguishes him from a machine. Motives, however, are not ob- 
jective existences, or realities. They are subjective influences, 
deriving their power from passing through the character ; in 
truth, expressions of character formed in the past, and modify- 
ing character at the present. " But there has been no moment 
in his past history, when he has not been influenced by exter- 
nal circumstances." True ; the amount and the kind of influ- 
ence on his character, however, was determined ultimately by 
that character itself. And there never was a moment when he 
did not feel that he could modify it, if he willed to that ef- 
fect. Thus, without overlooking the influence of either his ex- 
ternal circumstances, or his physical organization, the modified 
result of both presupposes a modifying power, the power of the 
will. And, if asked, how this is possible, we can only appeal 
to consciousness that it is a fact. As an ultimate fact, " no man 
can give its proof to another, yet every man may jfind it for 
himself." And, having this fact of consciousness in our pos- 
session, to reason as if it were non-existent, is for reason to act 
irrationally. As to the mystery which the subject involves, 
the human will is only in this, as in other respects, an image of 
the Divine ; it is the mystery of a caused cause representing 
the greater mystery of an uncaused cause. But "there is 
nothing the absolute ground of which is not a mystery. The 
contrary were indeed a contradiction in terms ; for how can 
that, which is to explain all things, be susceptible of an expla- 
nation ? It would be to suppose the same i^ng first and sec- 
ond at the same time." 

26* 



306 - MAN. 

15. What is the principle of prayer bj which man "has 
power with God ?" In this exercise we see the human will 
essaying to put itself in communication with the Divine wiU : 
and the question arises, how God can answer prayer without in- 
fringing on his own immutability, or altering the course and 
constitution of nature ? In submission to this difficulty, some 
have regarded the advantage of prayer as limited to the salu- 
tary effect produced by the re-action of the exercise on the mind 
of the suppliant. But this is only to shift the difficulty. And 
the man who, perceiving this, philosophically argues against 
prayer altogether, is only shifting it again. For the real diffi- 
culty is only one of the many forms of the great mystery of 
causation ; and if he will explain how his argument is to move 
my mind (a fact the possibility of which he takes for granted), 
I may be able to explain how prayer moves the Divine mind — 
a fact the possibility of which I take for granted. The appar- 
ent difficulty arising from the Divine immutability is owing 
chiefly, I apprehend, to a misconception. Immutability is con- 
founded with immobility ; whereas, it must be of a nature to 
consist with universal activity, with the creation of the first sup- 
pliant, and with the conservation of the created universe. This 
activity is not merely in accordance with Divine immutability ; 
it is its consequence and manifestation. The longer the activ- 
ity continues, the more apparent will be the unchangeableness 
of the Divine character. That character is a prediction or an- 
ticipation of all the wants of the objective universe. Before 
man was made, it contained a phase for every relation which 
he might sustain. If God is pleased, therefore, to appoint that 
man shall come to him as a suppliant, the arrangement discloses 
an unchangeable part of the Divine nature. For man not to 
be heard and answered, when he complies with the conditions 
of acceptable prayer, could only arise from the termination of 
Divine immutability. As to the constitution of Nature, daily 
experience shows that its adaptation to our wants, in an indefi- 
nite variety of ways, is perfectly compatible with the stability 
of its laws ; that the blessing of rain, for example, in answer to 
prayer, need not disturb its regular course any more than the 
artificial conversion of air into water in the laboratory of the 
chemist. 

The great sphere of Divine operation, however, in answer to 
prayer, is to be regarded as lying in the mind itself He who 
has been pleased to invest us with influence over each other's 
spirits, cannot surely be regarded as having voluntarily shut 



O 



tTLTIMATE FACTS. 307 

Himself out from all access to them.. And, as witli the influ- 
ence which one human mind exercises over another, so the Di- 
vine operation is to be regarded as taking place in entire har- 
mony with the laws of our mental and moral freedom. The 
supreme design, indeed, of all the spiritual aid sought and im- 
parted in prayer, is to restore and enlarge that freedom. In a 
word, all Nature, rightly understood, is in prayer. " The eyes 
of all wait upon Thee." Every earnest supplication which is 
uttered illustrates, and harmonizes with, all the laws of man's 
nature. Every such prayer answered, illustrates all the per- 
fections of the Divine nature. Is it wonderful, then, that the 
feeling of the necessity of prayer should be absolutely universal ; 
that man's "heart and flesh should cry out for the living God?" 
The great mystery of goodness lies in the appointment or prin- 
ciple of the efficacy of prayer : the existence of the appointment 
itself is a fact, an ultimate fact. 

1 G. Whence arises our idea of a moral quality in actions ? 
We can trace the diversified relations in which we stand to 
each other, and to God. We may be able to show that certain 
lines of virtuous conduct towards the different beings to whom 
we are related, are more advantageous than any others. And 
from this perception we may derive a powerful motive to pur- 
sue such conduct. But quite distinct from this motive of advan- 
tage, and prior to it, there arises in the mind a feeling of ohliga/- 
tion that certain states of mind in relation to them are right, and 
ought to be manifested. And this feeling, springing up unbid- 
den, and antecedent to all knowledge of consequences, we can 
only regard as an ultimate fact of our moral constitution. 

17. Our idea of immortality possesses the same ultimate char- 
acter. Arguments, metaphysical and moral, are adducible in 
its support. But the belief of it exists prior to the argument, 
and independently of it. The conception of it seems easy and 
inevitable. The yearning expectation comes up from the depth 
and ground of our nature. The bare imagination of its op- 
posite produces a sense of sudden recoil. Everything within 
luid around us appears to presuppose the fact, and to taie it for 
granted. 

18. Moral evil, also, viewed subjectively, must be regarded 
as an ultimate fact. Made possible by the freedom of the vnW, 
it became actual by the determination of the wUl. No outward 
influence can account for its origination. The tempter himself 
is a tempter only, furnishing merely the occasions of evil. Evil 
has its seat and strength in the wUL It is, as we shall hereaf- 



308 MAN. 

ter have occasion to show, an act of the will, which was meant 
to subsist in harmony with the will of God, but which aims at 
self-subsistence in opposition to Him. 

19. And thus we find that every part of our constitution, from 
the elementary atom to the sense of moral obligation, points di- 
rectly to an ultimate fact. Take whatever branch of inquiry 
we may, and begin with whatever part of it we will, we soon 
find ourselves verging on the region of metaphysical research. 
A single question, on the most familiar subject, may land us in 
it. We are always moving near the point where, if explana- 
tion be sought, a principle has to be presupposed. The con- 
tingent asks for the necessary — the conditioned for the uncon- 
ditioned. Matter and motion, organization and life, nerves and 
sensation, the subjective and the objective, both of these and 
their cause, physical dependence and moral freedom, prayer 
and its power, an action and its obligation, contingent existence 
and immortality, a conditioned nature and sin — each of the 
two members in these successive steps (and others might be 
named*) can be shown to be reasonable ; but the nexus which 
binds them in harmony together, baffles our perception in every 
instance. Yet all these ultimate facts were involved in the con- 
stitution of the first human being. Most of them, as far as the 
earth is concerned, came into existence with him, or were origi- 
nated in his person. The great mysteries already involved in 
the conjunction of Freedom and Purpose in the Divine mind, 
and of Creative mind with created matter in the Divine con- 
duct, were now made manifest in a being whose constitution 
combined matter and spirit, and whose conduct reconciled lib- 
erty and law ; and who, in this new and lofty sense, was the 
image of God. 

* Such as thought, in its relation to language ; the power of behef 
which evidence presupposes but cannot create ; and the ideal beauty which 
nature suggests but does not realize. 



O 



NECESSARY TRUTHS. 309 

CHAPTER XVI. 

NECESSARY TRUTHS. 

1. From the ultimate facts of man's nature and condition, 
let us ascend to the necessary truths on which they repose, and 
in which they have their ground ; from the contingent expres- 
sions of the Divine will, to the Infinite Nature of which that 
will itself is the expression. Considered as mere phenomena, 
the existence of all the objects and events in the created uni- 
verse is entirely contingent on the sovereign will of God. Con- 
sidered as ultimate facts, they are contingently necessary; 
necessary on the supposition of the phenomena having been called 
into existence, but only on that supposition. While these ulti- 
mate facts themselves presuppose truths, or principles, which 
are purely and absolutely necessary. 

2. We have already remarked on the nature of necessary 
truth,* as that which is, and must be true, and the opposite of 
which is metaphysically inconceivable. We say metaphysically 
inconceivable as distinguished from that educational inconceiva- 
bleness of a thing which has sometimes pronounced a truth im- 
possible in one age, and its revise inconceivable in a succeed- 
ing age of better information. By the former, we mean that 
inconceivableness which arises from the constitution of the 
mind; by the latter, that which is derived from the mere 
strength of the opposite associations, and the modification of 
which is always conceivable and possible. 

3. " Even those philosophers who profess to derive all our 
knowledge from experience, and who admit no universal truths 
of intelligence but such as are generalized from individual 
truths of fact — even these philosophers are forced virtually to 
acknowledge, at tlie root of the several acts of observation from 
which their generalization starts, some law or principle to which 
they can appeal as guaranteeing the procedure, should the va- 
lidity of these primordial acts themselves be called in question.^f 
When JVIill, for example, inquires, " How can we imagine an 
end to space or time ?" and endeavors to account for its incon- 
ceivableness by stating, that as " we never saw any object with- 
out something beyond it, nor experienced any feeling without 

* Supra, p. 55. t Sii' W. Hamilton's Diss, on Reid, p. 743. 



SlO MAN. 

something following it ; therefore, when we attempt to conceive 
the last point of space, we have the idea irresistibly raised of 
other points beyond it ; and when we try to imagine the last in- 
stant of time, we cannot help conceiving another instant after 
it,"* he is, in effect, surrendering the all-sufficiency of experience. 
The " irresistible idea," and the conception which we " cannot 
help," are laws of intellect. Far as experience may carry us, 
these laws go "beyond," and transcend it. Experience only 
suggests the existence of space by revealing the existence of the 
objects contained in it ; but from the instant the idea of space is 
awakened, the intellect cannot think it non-existent. The ob- 
jects contained in it we can, in thought, annihilate ; but who 
can think of space except as existent ? We feel that it exists 
independently of the mode in which we conceive of it ; inde- 
pendently even of there having been any created minds to con- 
ceive of it at all ; that it exists necessarily. 

4. It may be proper to repeat here, that every necessary 
truth is characterized by universality ; which is only saying that 
a truth which could be shown to be not necessary for one mind, 
would, by that very fact, be proved to be not necessary for any 
mind. As necessary, also, a truth is primary or original ; nei- 
ther dependent on, nor derived from, any anterior truth. And, 
therefore, inexplicabU ; for if we could explain ivhy or how it is, 
that explanation itself would be the prior and primary truth. 
"While its certainty is such, that the certainty of every subordi- 
nate truth of the same class depends on it. 

5. But what are the metaphysical principles which possess 
these characteristics of necessary truth ? Without proposing to 
give a fuU enumeration of them, we have already specified four ; 
and have stated the ground of our selection — namely, that they 
are such as are presupposed by the very possibility of a Divine 
manifestation — such as must iiave been present to the mind of 
the Creator as the absolute conditions of a creation. All body 
must be in space : then the creation of the universe presupposes 
the space in which it exists ; and although no eye had ever 
opened in it, no atom ever floated through it, the non-existence 
of space is inconceivable. Every succession must be in time ; 
then, for the same reason, duration must have existed prior to, 
and independently of, the creation, for it is an indispensable 
condition of its existence. Everything which begins to exist 
must have an efficient cause: the contrary is mconceivable. 

* System of Logic, vol. i. p. 317. 



o 



NECESSARY TRUTHS. Sll 

Even Hume did not deny that the notion of Cause was in- 
dispensable in relation to all natural knowledge. The bare 
conception of a creation presupposes the power adequate to 
cause it ; and a power, therefore, which must have existed even 
apart from the actual causation of the material universe. 
Every substance implies attributes or properties, and every 
property implies a substance. The one cannot be thought of 
without implying the other. The properties of the objective 
universe imply a subjective, of which they are the manifestation. 
Matter presupposes spirit. And thus we ascend from that 
causative Will of which creation is the effect, to that Divine 
Nature of which the properties or characteristics of creation are 
the revelation. 

6. This leads us to speak of other truths as necessary, truths 
which, as presupposed by the very possibility of a Divine 
manifestation, are independent of it. Every contingent de- 
termination implies moral freedom, and freedom implies the 
power of contingent determination. The Divine determination 
to create man, presupposes the power of abstaining from such 
a purpose ; otherwise the determination would result from a 
necessity or fate, the very opposite of freedom ; or, rather there 
could be no room for any determination on the subject. Then, 
the freedom which this purpose implies would have existed, and 
could not but exist, even if man — at once its proof and its 
image — had never been called into being. How this freedom 
is compatible with that moral necessity or certainty which the 
Divine Perfection is under, of choosing always that which is 
best, is not the point before us. Both the freedom and the cer- 
tainty are primary and necessary truths each in its own pecu- 
liar sphere ; and, if primary, they cannot admit of demonstra- 
tion, since there can be nothing by which to demonstrate them. 
The only point of their coincidence is in that Personal perfec- 
tion which makes them both equally necessary. 

7. The distinction between right and wrong is another im- 
mutable truth. Men may differ slightly respecting the appli- 
cation of the terms, but the antithesis between the ideas is a 
universal conception. They may neglect to apply it to certain 
classes of actions and affections ; but the oracle from on high no 
sooner commands it than the voice within repeats the conmiand. 
Its reality is recognized in the structure of all languages. So 
far from being created by law, it is itself a lawgiver. Laws 
presuppose it, and are good only as they utter its mandates. Its 
throne is higher and older than Sinai itself, to which it has to 



312 MAN. 

descend when it speaks to men. It cannot be confounded with 
interest and utility. These may excite desire, but rectitude im- 
poses a sense of obligation. Its smiles and frowns are too quick 
for a selfish calculation, and the sacrifices which it commands 
are made for its own sake, apart from all consideration of con- 
sequences. Its emotions are specific; disdaining every other 
occasion as inferior, they reserve themselves for the presence 
of those qualities alone which are to form the subject of the 
final investigation. It has an origin logically anterior even to 
the will of the ever-blessed God. That is to say, it is not ex- 
cellent because He wills it, but He wills it because it is excel- 
lent ; so excellent as to constitute his Nature. Every volition 
of the Divine mind, therefore, presupposes it, and is its expres- 
sion. " The righteous Lord loveth righteousness." When it 
speaks or wills, it wills with the authority of His infinite nature. 
It is independent of all created existence. Like the mathemat- 
ical truths of which the material universe is His chosen diagram, 
but which would have been truths had no created forms or mo- 
tions ever existed to exemplify them, the distinction between 
truth and falsehood, good and evil, is perfectly irrespective of 
human conscience, or created apprehension. It is " from eter- 
nity to eternity." As well might we conceive of a past period 
when the radii of a circle were not necessarily equal, or of some 
future time Avhen a circle shall have two centres, as of a period 
when right and wrong shall be converted or commuted. Rec- 
titude is as immutable as the infinite excellence which enshrines 
it ; and " He cannot deny himself" 

8. To these necessary beliefs we may add the idea of joer- 
fection. An archetype of order, harmony, fitness, and beauty, 
inhabits the mind, which nothing external has ever realized. 
The comparison of one degree of excellence with another may 
have at first awakened the idea, but could not have created it ; 
for how can. the relative give birth to the absolute, the effect 
transcend its cause ? Actual experience gives us nothing but 
the variable, the limited, the incomplete. Yet not only does 
every new grace unveil its face to us as that of a well-remem- 
bered friend, it assures us of an excellence of infinite perfec- 
tion, and of which all created beauty is only an emanation. No 
conception of excellence short of this standard is, or can be, 
final. Passing beyond all the reahties of finite being, the mind 
beholds in the Infinite himself the only greatness and beauty 
which can satisfy its conceptions, an object which "borrows 
splendor from all that is fair, subordinates to itself all that is 



O 



NECESSARY TRUTHS. 313 

great, and sits enthroned on the riches of the universe." But 
the existence of that perfection depends not on the ability of 
any created intelligence to conceive of it. From eternity it 
must have been the ever-present subject of the Divine contem- 
plation, because tlie ever-conscious character of the Divine 
nature. 

9. The idea of law is as necessary for the reason as the idea 
of cause ; so that, if every phenomenon must have a cause, it 
is a truth equally necessary that it must have a law. Holding 
its eternal seat in the mind of God, it made all the sequences 
and uniformities of the objective universe possible, when as yet 
the first of them had to be created. The same is true of the 
idea of Design, of Personality, of Immortality, and of some 
others. These- truths are all primitive, necessary, universal. 
The mind cannot act without them. They belong to its struc- 
ture. Whatever external influence may be necessary in order 
to awaken them, they have an a priori existence of their own, 
and claim immediate kindred with the mind of the Creator. 

10. Here, then, we find ourselves brought into the awful 
presence of primordial truth. We can conceive of a period in 
past duration when the Infinite Being dwelt alone in his own 
immensity. But, even then, a creation was possible ; and here 
are the deep foundations, the very grounds on which that pos- 
sibility rested. Even then a creation was purposed ; and here 
are the first truths, the primary ideas, which that purpose pre- 
supposed ; here, dimly looking forth from the depths of eternity, 
are solemn and profound aspects of the incomprehensible na- 
ture of which the creating will is to be the utterance, and of 
which created objects are to be the manifestation ? But what 
must be the constitution of the creature who shall be capable of 
receiving the manifestation ? For some of these awful aspects 
and eternal truths are not susceptible of material forms ; ideas 
of obligation cannot be set forth by color or diagram. Even 
in relation to such ideas as admit of material representation, 
the actual must ever fall infinitely below the possible; the 
worlds which will be are outnumbered by the archetypes ever 
present to the mind of God of works Avhich might be. And 
now that the silence of eternity has been broken, and creation 
has advanced through the successive stages of matter, and life, 
and sensation, the mind capable of apprehending these neces- 
sary and eternal truths is still wanting. They are not, cannot 
be, in these created objects, any more than the face is in the 
mirror which reflects it. They do not admit even of being 

27 



314 MAN. 

observed in them. As they were presupposed by the Eternal 
mind, so must they be by the mind of the being who shall infer 
the character of the Creator from his works. Such a creature 
appears in the person of man. Endowed with a designing 
mind, he recognizes marks of design in every department of 
creation. Having the foundations of law, and the principles 
of science, inlaid in his constitution, he finds himself in a world 
perpetually appealing to those principles, and referring him to 
these laws. Creation is ever remanding him to its Maker, and 
thus reminding him that he is connatural with the Divine. The 
observation of phenomena soon brings him to a fact which, as 
far as nature is concerned, is ultimate ; if he would advance 
beyond, he finds himself in the presence of the Supernatural. 
Penetrating beyond the contingent and the sensible, he lifts the 
veil to find himself standing face to face with truths which were 
ever present to the Eternal mind as the necessary conditions 
of its objective manifestation. What close and ineffable com- 
munion with the Deity is this ; not with His will merely, but 
even with His eternal nature ! 



CHAPTER XVn. 



ANALOGY. 



1. In the evolution of a Divine system it may be expected 
that every part will be in harmony and analogy with every other 
part. For if the whole is to be, in some respect, an analogue 
of the Divine Being, every separate portion of it must be sim- 
ilarly related to every other part, otherwise the whole will not 
resemble Him. Accordingly, we find that the entire constitu- 
tion of man is arranged on a plan which harmonizes all its 
parts into one whole, and that whole with the universe. The 
full illustration of this fact would require an analysis of all the 
preceding chapters. We shall, however, only glance at two 
or three of the more general indications of such a plan in the 
human being, point out certain analogies between the human 
dispensation and those which preceded it, and the rules and 
means of classification which the subject suggests and provides. 

2. Viewing man apart from the universe which surrounds 



ANALOGY. 315 

him, he exhibits in his own person an all-related system of 
means and forces. Even the lowest and minutest part of this 
system has a constitution of its own. A single hair is an organi- 
zation, a world. But all the infinitely diversified parts of the 
system, physiological, mental, and moral, are elaborated into a 
single constitution. These characteristic parts are not developed 
capriciously and without order, but according to a law which 
regulates their succession. Supposing them to be all present, 
and in their appointed order, we have seen that it is not optional 
or immaterial to man w^hich part prevails and which submits. 
Their rank and office are fixed. Sensation is the servant of 
thought ; thought subserves emotion ; emotion can, through the 
medium of thought, be diverted or be held in abeyance by the 
w^ill, while conscience is, in the sense previously stated, the 
supreme authority for the will. 

As a being who is capable not only of understanding the great 
proce3S into which he has come, but of actually subserving it, 
the rank and office of his motives are commanded. His self-love 
is designed to regulate his appetites, his affections to control his 
self-love, and his regard for the will and character of God to 
direct the whole. And who does not perceive that this order is 
according to an ascending scale of importance ? that, w^hile the 
appetites ask but a small range of objects, self-love contemplates 
the good of the entire being, and for all the future ; the affections 
embrace the similar well-being of others ; and a sense of duty, 
by leading him into the presence, and placing him under the 
government of God, surrounds and unites him with the origin 
and end of all things. No derangement of this all-compacted 
constitution can take place with impunity. The higher parts 
are not independent of the lower ; the least is essential to the 
integrity and the well-working of the entire man. No property, 
function, or power, is isolated. " All the parts are mutually 
ends and means." Nor, viewed in relation to time, is the iden- 
tity of his nature ever lost, or the progress of his character ever 
discontinued. Memory, association, and habit, present the record 
of his history. The past, in its effects, is ever present with him. 
His character, though always undergoing modification, is always 
whole. 

3. Regarding man in his objective relations, we find all the pre- 
existing laws, physical, organic, and animal, brought forwards, 
and assumed in the corresponding parts of his constitution. 
His structure and physiology point to a type, and are suggestive 
of the great scheme of organization in which he finds his appro- 



316 MAN. 

priate place. Many things which were only begun in the pre- 
ceding stages of creation are resumed, more fully developed, 
and completed, in him ; and some things which, before, were 
shadowy and vague, are interpreted, and even become the in- 
terpreters of other things. 

Man is to understand creation, and, by this means, to know 
his Creator. Accordingly, he is placed in sensible communi- 
cation with the external world ; or, is made susceptible of a 
sensible change, or mental impression, answering to each of all 
the phenomena of external nature. These phenomena are all 
related by certain general laws, or in a unifonn manner ; and 
he is capable of recognizing these uniformities, confidently 
calculates on them, and generaUzes them all into groups and 
classes according as they more or less resemble each other. 
These phenomena, besides being related to each other, are 
related also to that which contains them, and which accounts 
for their existence ; and man is made susceptible of having the 
ideas which these relations presuppose, awakened in his mind 
— ideas which conduct him directly to the infinite and eternal 
Being for whose manifestation the creation exists. But the 
phenomena actually created do not exhaust the Divine resources, 
for God is infinite ; and man is able to imagine, not only the 
archetypes of existing realities, but of objects unknown to the 
actual universe. In other words, he can ascend from the visible 
and contingent to those laws and facts which, to nature, are 
ultimate, and from these again to the necessary truths which 
these contingent objects and ultimate facts presuppose, as well 
as imagine a vast range of unrealized conceptions which these 
necessary truths make possible. Thus constituted, it might be 
expected that he would be capable of learning more from his 
intelligent fellow man than from any other object of external 
nature ; and, accordingly, he is endowed with the power of 
interchanging thoughts, of bearing , credible testimony to the 
truth of his statements, and of believing testimony so rendered. 
Language, the great medium of his mental communications, is 
an ever-growing illustration of the analogy existing between the 
operations of the world within and all that exists around it. 
Indefinitely varied as are the relations which he sustains to 
external objects, and the points from which he views them, four 
or five classes of verbs at most, employed in four or five moods, 
are made to supply all his purposes, owing to the resemblance 
of which he is conscious between his different states of mind. 
Innumerable as are the kinds of relations existing between 



ANALOGY. 317 

external tilings, five or six cases of nouns (speaking generally) 
express them all for him, for he traces so many classes of simili- 
tude among them. "While every word, expressing as it does at 
first the relation of some one thing, comes to denote the analo- 
gous relations of a number of other things ; and even his own 
faculties and mental phenomena derive their names mostly from 
the sensible properties of matter. Whatever the subject which 
may occupy his thoughts, he finds tliat, as a poet, a world of im- 
pressive images lies around him ; as a reasoner, comparisons 
surround him ; as a scientific theorist, wherever he looks pro- 
lific suggestions meet his eye, offering to lead him from the 
known to the unknown ; as a religious being, all the- finite and 
the visible refer him to the Infinite invisible. Language, which, 
by its analogical character, is the living record of this fact, is 
thus ever memorializing him that his own mind is a system 
capable of tracing its relations to the great system to which it 
belongs ; and that it enjoys this high prerogative in virtue of 
its being the analogue and image of Him who is the Creator of 
both. 

4. But if man is constituted to know, it is in order that he 
may appreciate that which he knows according to its rank and 
ofiice in the great scheme. Everything around him is meant to 
move ; to move him ; to move him towards God. But every- 
thing is meant to affect him differently. As objects occupy 
different ranks in the scale of creation, and display different 
aspects of the Divine character, man is endowed with the 
susceptibility of being moved by them accordingly. He finds 
himself in a temple filled with " figures of the true." Here, the 
most lovely objects are only the emblems, to him, of a beauty 
and an excellence wliich no material form can embody. Emo- 
tions of awe and majesty are awakened in his mind by objects 
in proportion as they seem to bring him near to the presence of 
Divine Greatness. The purest elements and objects are only 
symbols of the Divine Holiness ; and, like the cherubim figured 
on the temple-vail, acquire a sanctity, and inspire reverence, by 
their proximity to " the holiest of all." The tree in the midst 
of the garden was the symbol and instrument of moral govern- 
ment ; other trees might speak to unfallen man of Goodness, 
but that proclaimed Divine Equity; and every step which 
brought him nearer to that central object seemed to bring him 
on more hallowed ground. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart ; supreme excellence challenges supreme love. 
In virtue of this original appointment, all inferior exceUence 
27* 



318 MAN. 

takes a subordinate position, and measures its claim to our re- 
gard by the degree of its resemblance to the Divine Archetype. 
5. Man's power of choosing, according to his appreciation of 
objects, and of corresponding voluntary action, discloses other 
objective relations. He is a creature of animal appetites ; and 
external nature presents them with appropriate objects. He is 
capable of self-love — it is essential to his continued existence 
that he should be — and he, the subject of this regard, can, 
indirectly, become his own object. From the present, he can 
view himself objectively in the future, and can act from a regard 
to that future self " Prudence is an active principle, and im- 
plies a sacrifice of self, though only to the same self projected 
as it were to a distance." He is susceptible of affections ; and 
the external world presents him with objects calculated to keep 
them in perpetual play. He is capable of a sense of duty; 
and to this principle of action, the will of God, as the interpreter 
and enforcer of unalterable right, authoritatively appeals. Thus 
every part of his constitution finds its counterpart in the objec- 
tive universe ; from his appetites which stoop to gather up their 
objects from the dust, to his sense of duty which bears him away 
in homage to the throne of the Invisible. But how is the will of 
Ood, in the constitution of nature, ascertainable by man ? We 
have found that it is expressed in the operation of general laws, 
that, in relation to these laws, he finds himself right or wrong 
in his every movement ; and that having learned from experi- 
ence what these laws are, he has learned the will of God 
respecting his conduct towards them; and, then, as a being 
made capable of voluntarily obeying that will, he is held respon- 
sible for pursuing that conduct, and is guilty or not guilty 
accordingly. And thus even when allowably gratifying appe- 
tite, or when rightly influenced by self-love, or by the affections, 
the fact that he is acting according to the will of God, is still to 
be the controlling and supreme consideration. Of course, if the 
Divine will be vocally and directly addressed to him, as in the 
instance of the primal prohibition, he can apprehend and yield 
to it at once. But even as far as he is referred for his know- 
ledge of that will to the open volume of nature, so legibly is it 
written for the eye of conscience, that he may read that runs. 
There is, therefore, no part of his nature, and no moment of his 
existence, which is not met by the claims of duty. And the 
only condition on which he can be prepared to (Hscharge the 
dutv of any given moment is, that of his having fulfilled the 
obligation peculiar to every previous moment of his being. 



O 



ANALOGY. 319 

6. Further, as man's powers of knowing, appreciating, and 
voluntarily acting in, the external world, bring him under obli- 
gation respecting the course and character of his action, we have 
found that he enjoys an amount of good, or well-being, propor- 
tioned to the discharge of his obhgations. If the phenomena, 
mental and moral, which man exhibits, are not unconnected and 
capricious, but arranged in an orderly constitution, it follows that 
that constitution has a tendency and an end ; that is, that its 
well-being is not only more apparent when it acts according to 
a certain plan, than when it is acting according to any other, 
but that its well-being entirely depends on its so acting. That 
end we believe to be the end for which everything else exists, 
and for which God himself wills and acts — the manifestation 
of the Divine excellence. Accordingly, ar a part of the mani- 
festation, man enjoys the advantage and pleasure of being in 
harmony with his relations to the great plan, even though acting 
in ignorance of them. As that distinguished part to whom the 
manifestation is made, his advantage is proportioned to the rank 
of the motive from which he acts. If he act rightly from any 
motive, " verily, he has his reward." But he is capable of doing 
everything from the highest motive, from a regard to the same 
end for which God is conducting the great process of Divine 
manifestation ; and, in proportion as he thus acts, he gains every 
Inferior end, and shares with the Divine Being the happiness of 
realizing the highest end. Perhaps there is nothing which more 
convincingly shows that the nature of man is arranged on a plan, 
and that that plan harmonizes with the great objective plan 
which includes everytliing, than the various grounds assigned 
by different ^vriters as the basis of moral obligation. If one 
athrms, for instance, that morality is founded on the emotions, it 
indicates the foct tliat tl)e whole of our emotional nature is har- 
monized with all the requirements of morality. If another con- 
tends that it is obligatory because it is agreeable to reason and 
the nature of things, this only shows that our intellectual nature 
is made to harmonize with it as well as our emotional. If the 
the selfist contends that the good of self is the only principle of 
virtue, this, at least, indicates that our sensitive nature has been 
made coincident with the laws of morality. If the utilitarian 
contends that only the useful is virtuous, this implies that we are 
under the economy of a Being who has made our duty and our 
welfare to coincide. Or, if it be affirmed that the will of God 
is the ultimate foundation of right, this obviously implies that 



320 MAN. 

obedience and happiness are relative terms.* We have seen, 
indeed, that the true basis of morahty is distinct from the exer- 
cise of mere will ; that it has an independent existence anterior 
to law, and of which law is only the proclamation ; that it had 
an eternal pre-existence in the character of the Godhead. But 
all these differing views conspire to show, at least, how essen- 
tially the laws of morality are inwrought into man's nature, into 
every part of it ; how entirely " the man in the breast," answers 
to the objective economy on high ; and how truly the human 
character is formed on the model of the Divine, and in order to 
its manifestation. God and man are, in this sense, relative 
terms. 

7. Hypothetically speaking, man might have been constituted 
precisely as he now is, before the world for which he is made 
was called into existence. And, then, a being, adequately en- 
dowed might have inferred, had man's slumbering faculties and 
susceptibilites been disclosed to him, the constitution of the 
world he was destined to inhabit. Just as, perhaps, angelic be- 
ings, on the other hand, did vaguely infer, from an inspection 
of that world, the constitution of the being for whom it was 
designed. Not only, therefore, is every part of man's nature re- 
lated to, and in analogy with, every other part, but the whole is 
in correspondence with the objective universe. He stands in 
the centre of the whole, with every law and influence meeting 
in him, every object and event leaving an impression on him. 
A celestial globe, on which every constellation and star has its 
place, and which is rectified for taking astronomical observa- 
tions, is but an imperfect image of man's correspondence with 
the objective universe. He lives as within an illuminated 
globe — his own mind the flame which illuminates it, the light 
by which he reads it. Every object and event which he wit- 
nesses, and every law which he traces, writes the fact of its ex- 
istence on- his mind. So that if a supernatural being, as we just 
now remarked, could have synthetically conjectured what kind 
of a world the earth would be from looking at his powers and 
susceptibiHties, just as well could such a being now infer, analy- 
tically, what kind of an economy, physical, intellectual, and 
spiritual, he has inhabited, by examining the prints and traces 
which it leaves upon the mind. 

8. We have now to glance at certain analogies between the 

* Dr. Chalmers's Bridgewater Treatise, y. ii., p. 93 ; Warburton's Di- 
vine Legation, B. I., §§ iv. v. 



r^ 



ANALOGY. 321 

commencement of the human dispensation and those which pre- 
ceded it. The creation of man interrupted the course of nature 
neither more nor less than it had been interrupted by prior 
creations. If there be one conclusion in philosophy more cer- 
tain than another, it is that the material universe must have 
had a beginning. Equally evident is it, not only to reason but 
to sense, that since the period of that primary miracle — when 
first the possible became actual, and law became objective — a 
succession of changes and additions have taken place, each of a 
kind entirely unknown to all that had gone before. Great cos- 
mi cal changes have occurred. Stars have appeared and disap- 
peared.* On the globe which we inhabit, geology shows that 
changes such as man's limited experience has never witnessed, 
have occurred, times without number. To say nothing of the 
eventful moment when the great mystery of Life first appeared 
on tlie earth, and of the equally-marked occasion when a sense 
of animal enjoyment was first added to life, whole races of ani- 
mals have, since then, appeared and disappeared, and have been 
replaced by others in turn. Four times, at least, did these 
changes take place in the course of the tertiary era ; and, to an 
extent which leaves hardly a species of the first period extant 
among the species now living. Now the present laws of nature, 
as known to man, will not account for the origination of these 
species. These laws announce themselves only as* regulating 
the succession of species already originated — the production 
of similar beings from their parent stock. Something, there- 
fore, must have taken place at the first appearance of these be- 
ings to which the laws of nature, as we see them in operation, 
are not adequate. The new consequent implies a new antece- 
dent. The new effect to which nature is inadequate, implies a 
cause which is swjoer-natural. The inference is, that every such 
effect is directly originated by the same Cause as that to which 
nature itself owes its origin. And this is, substantially, the 
Biblical statement respecting the origin of man. He takes his 
place on the earth as one in a progressive series of creations. 
An intelligent being of another order — the Cuvier of a differ- 
ent world — if permitted to examine the animal remains in our 
earth's crust, could only infer that, at widely-separated periods, 
new classes of organized beings had been created, and that 
among the newest of such creations was one answering to the 
description of man. 

* Herschel's Astronomy, p. 383 1 Proc. R, Ast, Soc, No. iii., Jaa. 1840. 



<2ZZ MAN. 

9. In prior creations, respect had been had to the physical 
fitness of the earth's condition to the pecuHar constitution of the 
new-made beings. If, indeed, the theory of creation or devel- 
opment by natural law be adopted, it would follow that as soon 
as ever certain natural conditions were present, certain crea- 
tures would start into life by inevitable necessity. But condi- 
tions are not causes ; nor does the evidence adduced in support 
of the theory, prove anything more than the ease with which 
uniform conjunction may be mistaken for necessary connection. 
The uniform conjunction of which we speak is, not that the 
animal invariably follows the physical condition, but that the 
existence of certain forms of animal life uniformly presuppose 
certain adapted states of the element they inhabit. Though 
water did not create fish, the existence of marine tribes pre- 
supposes, not the sea merely, but the existence of a marine tem- 
perature and condition suited to their sustenance. Similarly, 
the period of man's creation was related to the physical condi- 
tion of the earth. The probability is, indeed, that, as far as 
these conditions are concerned, he might have been created 
earlier or later, had the Creating will so determined ; tliat is, 
that during, at least, the latter part of the tertiary period, the 
state of the earth was not unfitted for his existence. There 
was, however, a prior period when, with his present constitu- 
tion, existence would have been impossible. And not until 
that condition of the earth had passed away, was man brought 
into being. The Mosaic account of the Adamic creation is, in 
one view, an exposition of the fitness of the earth for man's 
habitation. 

10. But (it may be asked) is it not contrary to all analogy, 
and enough to shake our confidence in the uniformity of Na- 
ture, that, after the course of things had proceeded regularly 
for an indefinite series of ages, a being so unique as man should 
at length appear on the earth ? Doubtless, we reply, his crea- 
tion demonstrates how dangerous it is for a being who has only 
the experience of a thousand ages, to indulge in confident spec- 
ulations respecting what contingencies will take place in the 
empire of an infinite and eternal Being. An intelligent crea- 
ture who had observed the order of events during all those ages, 
and who had presumed dogmatically to predict the same order 
for all the future, would have felt Divinely rebuked by this un- 
expected innovation on his views, and might have derived from 
it the salutary lesson that his hmited knowledge was hardly a 
fitting standard with which to measure beforehand the contents 



O 



of an unlimited scheme.* But a being who had either known 
the earth prior to the appearance of vegetable life and animal 
enjoyment, or who ascribed these events to Divine interposition, 
could not have regarded man's creation as an event incompati- 
ble with his views of the permanency of the laws of Nature. 
Those prior events would have prepared him for it. By the 
law of analogy, he would have looked out for the coming of a 
wonder transcending all the past. His views being taken, not 
from a bounded interval of strict uniformity, however long its 
duration, but from a height commanding a survey of the suc- 
cessive changes which the earth had already witnessed, would 
have led him to anticipate another change, not as an exception 
to the true economy of the universe, but as proper to it. True, 
the new-made race were to be armed with unusual powers ; 
but when he saw that the great distinction of human nature lay, 
not in its physical, but in its intellectual and moral endowments ; 
that these would enable it, not to subvert a single pre-existing 
law, but only to comprehend and employ creation, animate and 
inanimate, his confidence in the conditional stability of Nature 
would be confirmed rather than impaired. Accordingly, this 
very stability was one of the first truths which man himself re- 
cognized, and on which he reposed. His movements assumed 
every previous law of Nature, and confirmed it. He ascended 
his throne to find that his empire admitted of no re-construction 
or change, that its constitution was fixed, and that if he would 
reign, it could only be in harmony with its laws, of which his 
own nature might be regai'ded as the statute-book. 

11. The commencement of moral government upon earth, 
then — of the government by motives of a free being conscious- 
ly accountable for his actions — was no violation of the great 
scheme of Nature. To say that nothing identical with it had 
pre-existed on earth, is only to object that the same thing can- 
not be first and second at the same time, or that a thing is con- 
trary to experience till it has been experienced. If this were an 
objection, it would lie equally against organic life and afiimal en- 
joyment, for these also had to begin. And as these repealed no 
prior laws, but were superinduced upon, and employed them, so 
moral government is only a step further in advance of a yet un- 
folding plan. Accordingly, in the person of every infant human 
being, these three stages — the organic, the sentient, and the 
moral — may be seen to evolve in succession, yet the third, so 

* Lyeirs Geology, ch. ix. 



BU MAN. 

far from being regarded as an innovation, is looked for as es- 
sential to the completion of the constitution which includes the 
other two. 

12. For the same reason, the mere fact that man was placed 
in a state of probation, which impHes the presence of possible 
incitements to evil, as well as of inducements to good, was no 
infraction of the ancient scheme into which he came. Rather, 
as that plan was progressive, and exhibited already distinct and 
successive stages, it was in analogy with it. Allowing, then, 
that moral government and probation, regarded as mere addi- 
tions to a progressive scheme, cannot be objected to without in- 
volving the preceding stages of creation in the same objection, 
let us see whether the great truths which they include are not 
also in analogy with creation. 

13. The probationary form of moral government under which 
primeval man was placed, implied the perpetuity of his existence. 
" There is in every case a probability that all things will con- 
tinue as we experience they are, in all respects, except those in 
which we have some reason to think they will be altered."* 
Now, all Nature is vocal with this truth, for it is only another 
mode of stating the uniformity of its laws. On the faith of this 
persevering constancy, the first man tilled the ground. While 
philosophy assumes it as axiomatically true of motion, that a 
body at rest will continue at rest, or if in motion, will continue 
in motion. The punishment with which man was threatened 
affected only the form or mode of his continued existence, not 
its reality. The sentence which remanded his body to the dust, 
implies that all the rest of his nature would survive. The fact 
that a part existed before death, and was untouched by death, 
afforded a presumption that it would continue to live after that 
event. Its changed condition has its analogies in Nature. For 
it is a general law, that creatures should be found " in one pe- 
riod of their being greatly different from those appointed them 
in another period of it." Thus, man's first sleep suspended for 
awhile his existence, more, possibly, than it was in the power 
of death to do, and yet he lived on, and awoke to a new day. 
The insect, once crawling in the dust, might be seen emerging 
from its grave and its shroud, winged to soar at pleasure into a 
new element. And the embryo in the womb, after passing 
through a succession of singular transitions, came forth, at 
length, to an independent existence, in what was, to it, the fu- . 

* Butler, Part I., c. i. 



o 



ANALOGY. 325 

ture state of this world. Now, here were facts more ancient 
than human nature : not, indeed, indicating the mode of man's 
perpetuated existence — not even proving the certainty of it — 
but indicating its possibility, and showing that if it should be 
proved on its own independent evidence, creation abounds with 
striking coincidences with it. 

14. Man's probationary state implied that his well-being de- 
pended, in some measure, at least, on his present conduct; and 
that, in relation to that conduct, he was endowed with a self- 
regulating power. The first part of this proposition is as true 
of the animal kingdom as it is of the human dispensation ; so 
that man's introduction was, in this respect, productive of no 
novelty. The second part of the proposition, however — that 
man is, in some degree, a self-controlling force — points to that 
part of his constitution which places him at the farthest remove 
from Nature. Of the fact itself there is no question, for con- 
sciousness is ever attesting it. And our own constitution, as 
subjects of God's natural government, teems with analogies to it. 
Youth prepares for manhood, and manhood for old age. We 
propose ends, and devise means for attaining them. To-day is 
a prophecy of to-morrow. Life is a calculation.* But the 
point of view which we occupy does not allow us to avail our- 
selves of this store of coincidences. For they all alike imply 
that self-regulating power which is the very property we have 
to illustrate as being in harmony with Nature. 

Now that man's possession of a causative will did not con- 
stitute him an alien in creation, or indicate a departure from its 
plan, appears from this, that he can move only in a line with 
its laws. Every infraction of them is a self-infliction. To 
violate them demonstrates, not their weakness, but his own ; 
while, to develop them, is self-development. Further, Nature, 
if interrogated, will be found to have uttered her " dark sayings " 
respecting the antecedent possibility of such a power. The 
balancing of two opposing forces — the centripetal and the cen- 
trifugal — so as to produce a planetary orbit nearly circular, 
is suggestive, at least, of the possibility of harmonizing depend- 
ence with freedom. Organic life is an arrangement of means 
and ends. The plant has a constitution. Though dependent 
on its parent seed" for existence, its after-life is independent of 
it. Though dependent on the earth for the maintenance of that 
after-life, its specific individuality is independent. In the 

* Butler, Part I., cc. ii. iii. iv. v. 
28 



326 3IAN. 

instinctive movements, and constrained volitions, of animal life, 
this individuality reaches a still higher point of development. 
If, however, it be objected that this self-subsistent individuality 
of the plant and the animal is only relative ; that even in the 
animal there is no self-consciousness, no freedom ; that the Will, 
which gives it law, and which necessitates its obedience, is not 
its own, but lies without it, we reply that, in that case, we may 
well desist from looking for analogies to the human will, for we 
have found its archetype. In seeking for a copy, we have dis- 
covered the Original. And if the unity of creation, before man 
came, was not merely compatible with the pervading activity of 
the great originating Will, but really and truly dependent on 
it, the introduction by that will of its own image, acting freely 
in harmony with it, could not be regarded as destructive of 
that unity. Indeed, in the human constitution itself we behold 
the noblest type and compendium of that unity — a free spir- 
itual power co-existing with a bodily nature, material, organic, 
and instinctive. 

15. Man's probationary state implied the possibility of failure. 
And the world into which he came contained innumerable anal- 
ogies of things open to a similar possibility, and not fulfilling 
the apparent design of their being. Thus, there are few organ- 
ized beings placed in such correlation with every element and 
substance around them, as to be absolutely secured from dis- 
turbance and destruction. Hence, the multitudes of seeds 
which perish annually without being sown, and of embryotic 
animals, which never see the light ; and of both plants and sen- 
tient beings, which are cut off before they reach maturity. It 
avails nothing to say that the hind of failure in the two cases 
is very different ; for we are not seeking identical, but analogous 
instances. Neither is it pertinent to object that all the disturb- 
ances of nature are the result of law ; that the storm and the 
volcano are only the solemn bass of a universal harmony — 
the destructive earthquake, avalanche, and flood, only the throes 
of forces giving birth to useful changes, and working out bene- 
ficial designs. So, also, moral changes, though not necessitated, 
may be benignly employed according to a plan, and for the lof- 
tiest purposes. We are not now speaking, however, of the 
ultimate ends, or possible designs, of the Infinite Mind, but of 
the possibilities involved in the constitution and condition of the 
creature. And as the world into which man came, we repeat, 
contained no life that was invulnerable, no race that was secure 
of its own individual ends ; as he stood, even in Paradise, on 



r\ 



ANALOGY. 327 

the grave of perished germs, and destroyed races, and as all na- 
ture sympathizes not less with his sorrows than with his joys, 
the implied fact of his own possibility of failure found ample 
analogical illustration. 

16. That God should disclose his will to probationary man in 
a direct manner, is not an event so antecedently improbable as 
to disturb or destroy the unity of the system into which man 
came. Unless the Divine Energy be supposed to have ex- 
hausted itself in the creation of man, the .Power which pro- 
duced such a result cannot be regarded as incapable of perform- 
ing other miraculous acts. Unless it be supposed that man was 
created without any design, that design may require that other 
miracles should subsequently be wrought in harmony with that 
primary miracle, and tending to the same result. This would 
certainly appear to be the part of Wisdom. And, unless it 
could be shown that no beneficent provision whatever was origi- 
nally made for human happiness, the existence of such provi- 
sion would seem to warrant the conclusion, that if it would be 
more for the well-being of man subsequently to enlarge that 
provision than not to do so, it would be worthy of Goodness so 
to enlarge it. If it be objected that the direct communication 
of the Divine will was miraculous, we reply that, in the same 
sense, every other provision for man's welfare had been, at the 
time of its origination, miraculous also ; that is, it had been un- 
known to the previous course of nature. So that, as to its 
miraculous character, the first revelation was in strict analogy 
with every prior arrangement for man's well-being. The truth 
is, however, as Butler well remarks, that "there is no such 
presumption against a revelation at the beginning of the world, 
as is supposed to be implied in the word miraculous. For a 
miracle, in its very notion, is relative to a course of nature, and 
implies somewhat different from it. Now, either there was no 
course of nature at the time which we are speaking of, or, if 
there were, we are not acquainted what the course of nature is 
upon the first peopling of worlds. And therefore, the question 
whether mankind had a revelation made to them at that time is 
to be considered, not as a question concerning a miracle, but 
as a common question of fact." * Moreover, the tendency of 
the revelation was in perfect analogy with the design of the 
entire system of animal instincts. The ofl&ce of these is to 
place and maintain the different parts and powers of the animal 

* Analogy, Part 11., c. ii. 



328 MAN. 

in harmonious relation with all their appropriate external ob- 
jects ; and the tendency of the first command was to apprise 
man's will that its only proper object was the Divine Will, and 
to preserve its happy subordination. The truth which they 
both taught was essentially the same — that the will of God is 
supreme. 

17. Even the difficvlties involved in man's moral probation 
are not without their analogies in nature. The very fact that 
he encounters mystery at almost every step in the domain of 
nature, prepares him to expect mystery in the department of 
moral government also. However welcome to him, therefore, 
the assurance might be that this government was of a kind to 
involve no mystery whatever, he could not receive such an 
assurance without strong suspicion. It would be out of analogy 
with nature. 

Further, the difficulties in the two departments are very sim- 
ilar in kind. In both, we find effects resulting from means ap- 
parently inadequate. Consequences unspeakably momentous 
to the first man are made to depend on his obedience to a sim- 
ple law ; and who would have supposed, a priori, that an insig- 
nificant coral insect would be the means of building up large 
islands from the bottom of the ocean, which may not unlikely 
be hereafter united into one vast continent, affecting the oceanic 
and chmatic influences of half the globe, and modifying the 
character of nations ? In both, ends the most desirable are 
brought about by means in themselves undesirable : for if it 
would have appeared antecedently objectionable that the trial 
and failure of man's virtue should be made the occasion of sub- 
sequently advancing his well-being, it seems also antecedently 
undesirable that a succession of natural convulsions should be 
employed to ameliorate the earth's surface for man's arrival ; 
that deadly poisons should be inserted among the treasures of 
nature, and • yet they are convertible into powerful antidotes ; 
that the death of the vegetable should be the means of life to 
the animal ; and that the inferior animal should form the neces- 
sary support of the superior animal. 

Or, if it be said that mystery was not to have been expected 
in the department of moral government, we reply, that such a 
notion may only show our incompetency to form antecedent 
expectations respecting it ; for that, in the same way, no one 
could have anticipated the planetary perturbations, and yet they 
are found to correct themselves ; or that mathematics, the sci- 
ence of demonstration, would teem with mysteries and contra- 



O 



ANALOGY. 329 

dictions;* that the arguments for the infinite divisibility of 
matter, and for its not being infinitely divisible, Avould be both 
unanswerable taken apart, and yet would answer one another ; 
or that if we are to see objects erect they w^ould be inverted on 
the retina ; or that if man is to be superior to the brute, his 
intellect should yet be, in some respects, inferior to instinct ; or 
that a capacity for pleasure should be in the same degree a ca- 
pacity for pain.f Or, if it be objected that the difficulties in the 
moral department exceed those of any prior stage of creation, 
we reply, that the law of analogy requires it ; for the sentient 
creation presents greater mysteries than the vegetable, and the 
vegetable than the inorganic. Each new stage presupposes all 
the difficulties which preceded it, and adds others peculiar to 
itself Besides, that moral truths "should exhibit greater 
eccentricity from the orbit which reason would mark out for 
them, and that they should more peremptorily disclaim to be 
measured by the rules of arbitrary hypothesis, is what may 
reasonably be attributed to the illimitable regions in which they 
expatiate." | 

And the occasion of the difficulties in the two departments 
appears to be analogous also- In our examination of the pre- 
adamite earth we saw that the constitution of nature is a scheme 
too vast for our comprehension. " The subtilty of nature (re- 
marks Bacon) far surpasses the gubtHty of either sense or 
intellect." Everything is related to everything. But if we take 
any one event as central, and look back in the direction from 
Avhich it came, we soon arrive at a point which compels us to 
stop, but where something invisible and unknown must be pre- 
supposed, in order to account for its existence ; if, then, we look 
forwards in the direction in which it is travelling, we see that 
there is no end to its effiscts, though it soon passes into a domain, 
where we have no power to follow it ; while, in both directions, 
we see it, in its progress, touching innumerable other things on 
the right hand and on tbe left, or touched by them, all of which 
are similarly charged with influences interminable. Now, it is 
highly credible that, in a similar manner, the difficulties and 
mysteries we encounter in our contemplation of man as a sub- 
ject of moral government, are owing to our imperfect compre- 
hension of it. We never see more than a small portion of it 

* See Dr. Henry More's " Antidote to Atheism," pp. 13 — 151. 
t Platon. Phsedon, 136. 

} Dr. Hampden's Essay on the Phil. Evid. of Christianity, p. 109. 
28* 



330 MAN. 

The perplexities belong to the subject, not to the object ; to the 
necessary limitation of the creature, and not to anything inhe- 
rently inexplicable in the acts of the Creator. This appears 
still more credible when it is remembered, that the two classes 
of difficulties are, as we have seen, in various respects, akin ; 
and, especially, that the moral scheme transcends the natural 
constitution, and takes us far beyond it. And so, also, from the 
fact that, in the natural scheme, means apparently undesirable 
are found, by experience, conducive to ends productive of a 
large overbalance of happiness, it is highly credible that the same 
is true, of means and ends in the moral scheme. The vindica- 
tion of this scheme, however, is not, at present, our object, but 
only to point out such analogies between it and the natural 
scheme as to justify the conclusion that they are only connected 
parts of the same great plan. 

This is the principle of Butler's immortal Analogy, " Origen 
(he remarks) has, with singular sagacity, observed, that < he 
who believes the Scriptures to have proceeded from him who is 
the Author of nature, may well expect to find the same sort of 
difficulties in it as are found in the constitution of nature.' And, 
in a like way of reflection, it may be added, that he who denies 
the Scripture to have been from God upon accoimt of these dif- 
ficulties, may for the very same reason deny the world to have 
been formed by Him." Admitting then, the system of nature 
to be of Divine origination, the analogies which exist between 
it and the moral scheme to which man belongs, warrant the con- 
clusion that they are more than analogically related,* that " they 
make up together but one scheme," of which the natural is car- 
ried on in subserviency to the moral administration. 

18. Now, if the distinct and successive parts of the creation 
constitute one entire whole, the various objects which it includes 
must admit of scientific classification. But what principle shall 
we take as the basis of our classification ; the objective, or the 
objects which the mind has to classify ; the subjective, or the 
faculties of the classifying mind itself; the ideas which each 
department of knowledge involves ; or any other principle ? 

=^ " To him (says the wonderful Roger Bacon — Doctor Mirahilis — in 
his Opus Majus, p. 476) — to him who denies the tmth of the faith be- 
cause he is unable to understand it, I will propose in reply the course of 
nature. . . . For if, in the meanest objects of creation, truths are found 
before which the mental pride of man must bow, and which he must be- 
lieve though he cannot understand, how much more should man humble 
his mind before the glorious truths of God." See also " Bishop Browne's 
Divine Analogy." 



O 



ANALOGY. 



331 



And having selected the principle, and applied it, so as to have 
parcelled out our knowledge into sciences, the order into which 
these parts shall be distributed has still to be determined. The 
basis does not necessarily disclose the dependence, or supply 
the arrangement, of the sciences. Thus, Lord Bacon, assuming 
the subjective basis, distributed knowledge into branches an- 
swering to memory, imagination, and reason ; but D'Alembert, 
while adopting the principle of Bacon's partition, changes the 
order of the distribution by placing reason b.efore the imagina- 
tion.* This order of succession has been made to depend,, gen- 
erally speaking, on the fact whether the method followed has 
been that of the order of discovery and historical progress, in 
which art usually precedes science ; or that of the order of phi- 
losophical exposition and instruction, in which scientific reasons 
and principles precede their practical application. 

19. The point of view from which we are enabled to look at 
the subject, presents us w^ith the basis and the order of both 
methods, shows them in harmonious combination, and accounts 
for their existence. For, first, as to the basis of classification, 
it presents us with the subjective principle, according to which 
the Creator is seen proceeding from the logical to the chrono- 
logical, from ideas to laws, from the general to the particular, 
from the possible to the actual, in the successively enlarging 
spheres of matter, hfe, sense, and reason ; a series in which man 
takes his place as one of the consecutive means hy which the 
Infinite is pleased to expound His own nature. Now this is a 
basis of arrangement, it will be observ^ed, which prescribes and 
includes its own order of distribution. God, nature, man ; the 
order is settled. According to this classification, we have ; — 



Fundamental ideas. 
Substance . . . 
Space and Time . 

Cause, or PoAver . 

Design, or Wisdom 
Goodness . . . 

Rightness . . . 



Sciences. 

Metaphysics . 

Mathematics . 

C Astronomy 

} Physics . . . 

( Chemistry,. . 
j Phytonomy 

( Botany . . . 

Zoology . . . 

S Applied sciences 

Ethics . . . 

^ Theology . . 



Classijication. 
Essential Being. 
Quantity, or conditions of 
dependent being. 

Unorganized Bodies. 

Organized Bodies. 
Sentient Being. 

Rational Being.t 



* Disc. Prelim, 
t Each of these div: 



sions easily admits of subdivision. The partial re- 



332 MAN. 

20. Sucli are the principle and tne order according to which 
we conceive of science as present to the Divine Mind. But in 
first studying and exploring it for himself, man has to pursue 
the reverse course. As a being to whom, as well as by whom, 
the Divine manifestation is made, he proceeds from the objec- 
tive to the subjective, from facts to principles, from the chrono- 
logical to the logical, which is, at every step, presupposed. 
Thus, if nature be his study, starting from the point where his 
own mind and nature touch — where sense-perception gives him 
the knowledge of external existence — he finds that these ex- 
ternal phenomena presuppose laws, and illustrate them ; and 
that these again presuppose certain principles, or ideas, without 
which he feels that all reasoning would be impossible. We 
say, he finds, and he feels ; and if next he looks into this find- 
ing and feeling being — himself — the order of his psychological 
investigation is still the same. Proceeding, that is, from the 
point where his mental contact with the external world awa- 
kens him to sensation, he finds, on turning back upon himself, 
that his mental phenomena are amenable to inherent laws, and 
that, as an intellectual being, those laws necessarily presuppose 
certain fundamental and primary ideas. This is the order of 
the mind's progress in knowledge, ahke with the unaided indi- 
vidual, and with a nation emerging from ignorance to the light 
of philosophy. And thus man finds himself returning by induc- 
tion to the region of deduction ; ascending an intellectual lad- 
der, which reaches from the finite to the infinite, from earth to 
heaven. And having reached the domain of primary truth and 
independent being, he sees why it is that we conceive of the 
Divine mind as proceeding from the subjective to the objective, 
or from the logical to the chronological, in the order spoken of 
above ; because the human mind is made in the image of the 
Divine, and is, when it attains to that conception, simply re- 
uniting itself intellectually, however imperfectly, with the Di- 
vine, and viewing objects from the same point. Henceforth, 
(though his method of learning and of verification is, and must 
be, from facts to principles) his method of philosophizing and 
exhibiting knowledge is one with that of the Author of nature. 

semblance of the third cohimn of this tabular arrangement to M. Comte's 
Tableau Synoptique in his Coiirs de Philosophic positive^ makes it proper 
for me to state that it existed before I had any knowledge of his classifi- 
cation. Indeed, a moment's consideration will show that it not only flows 
naturally from the order which my subject prescribes, but is absolutely 
required by it 



ANALOGY. * 333 

Hence Aristotle, not less than Plato, regarded metaphysics as 
coming after physics in the order of study, but as prior in the 
order of science, representing it as the First Philosophy and 
the Universal Science, common to all the sciences.* And Lord 
Bacon speaks of this Prima Philosophia as the root or stock 
out of wliich the other parts of knowledge shoot into separate 
branches.! Science results from the combination of the two 
methods — the analytical, which must guide our studies of na- 
ture, and by which we ascend from effects. to causes; and the 
syntlietical, which appears in the works of nature, and by which 
God is beheld descending from causes to effects. 

21. It may now be proper to call attention to the character- 
istics of the classification which we have adopted. First, start- 
ing with the idea or behef of a necessarily-existing and inde- 
pendent Being, and with the conditions of dependent being, we 
have regarded the successive stages of dependent being as 
based, respectively, on the ideas of power, and wisdom, and 
goodness, and holiness ; in other words, of cause, design, benev- 
olence, and rectitude. Secondly, these general ideas, which in- 
clude numerous subordinate ones, proceed from the more simple 
to the less, or rather from the most simple — that of an Infinite 
Being — to the regularly-increasing complex. For, thirdly, 
each science in the succession supposes the preceding science or 
sciences. Thus the mathematical science presupposes a scien- 
tial mind — a mind cognizant of the unalterable relations of 
space and number which constitute the scientific conditions of 
an actual creation ; the science of unorganized bodies presup- 
poses the mathematical and metaphysical sciences ; the science 
of organized bodies presupposes that of unorganized matter; 
and so of the rest. Thus, fourthly, the arrangement is, in effect, 
circular ; the science of mind. Of which the laws of human de- 
velopment in families and communities are but a further un- 
folding or illustration, remanding us to " the Father of spirits," 
whose manifested and revealed relations give us Theology, 
And, fifthly, this arrangement is in harmony with that Revela- 
tion which is a transcript of the Divine Mind, and, as such, finds 
its reason in Him whose nature is the ultimate ground of all 
things. 

22. But we have seen that man, besides being intelligent, is 
also an emotional, voluntary, and moral being. As intelligent, 

* Metaph., lib. i., c. 2 ; lib. iv., c. 1 ; lib. vi, c. 1. 
t De Augm. Sclent, lib. iii. c. 1. 



334 MAN. 

his sensational perceptions place him in relation to the bare 
phenomena of the external world, to the contingent, giving us 
unconnected facts ; his reflective understanding gives him the 
relations of these phenomena, as the prohahle, in the sense of 
the inductively proveable, or the experimental sciences; his 
reason gives him their ultimate relations, as the necessary, or 
deductive philosophy ; and, as the actual is necessarily limited, 
while the ideas which it embodies are unlimited, his imagina- 
tion gives him the possible, or that which might be : as emotion- 
al, he is placed in relation to the agreeable and desirable, or that 
which, in harmony with the general constitution of things, should 
be : as voluntary, he is related to the practicable, or that which 
can be ; these latter three giving us the arts aesthetic and use- 
ful : and, as endowed with conscience, he stands related to the 
moral in the largest and highest sense, or that which, in har- 
mony with immutable right, ought to be. 

And here, first, again, the order is from the most simple to 
the complex — from thought to emotion, from emotion to volun- 
tary action, and from action, right in the lower relation of man 
to the constitution of things, to action right also in its higher re- 
lation to the Author of that constitution. For, secondly, (as 
we have shown in the chapter on Order) the order of succes- 
sion is the order of dependence — the second implying the first, 
the third implying the preceding two, and the fourth presup- 
posing them all. So also, regarding man as a voluntary being 
influenced by motives, his instincts and passions, which connect 
him with the irrational creation, imply his sensational percep- 
tions merely ; his self-love, which individualizes him as a being 
having an end of his own, implies his rational powers and his 
appropriate emotions; his benevolent affections, which place 
him in relation to the human race, imply the preceding, and his 
impartative emotions also ; and his sense of obligation, which 
places him in relation to immutable Perfection, implies all the 
elements included in the other classes of motives. The same 
order of succession and dependence appears, if we look at man 
in his relation to the great end. His knowledge of God implies 
intelHgence, including imagination, to which the infinitude of the 
subject pre-eminently'appeals. His appreciation of the Divine 
excellence implies his emotional nature, which looks back to his 
knowledge. His acceptable obedience implies freedom of will, 
which looks back to his emotions. And his holy enjoyment of 
God implies that power of moral approbation which presup- 
poses all the rest, though it is something added to them. And 



r^ 



ANALOCY. 335 

thus, thirdly, whether we take man's nature in its totality, 
or in its intellectual, or its practical relations, or in respect 
to its final purpose, the same order of succession and de- 
pendence invariably lands us at that point where he is seen 
reflecting the Divine image, and partaking of the Divine nature ; 
and from whence he is meant to re-act, armed with the influence 
of the Divine government, on all the subordinate parts of his 
constitution. Nor, fourthly, is the science of human nature less 
based on a fundamental idea than are the sciences of external 
nature. The idea of Perfection lies at the foundation of all our 
psychological investigations ; and of this idea, Law, Truth and 
Beauty, Right and Obligation, Personality and ImmortaHty, are 
only correlative forms modified according to man's different re- 
lations. Ideas of Spirit and Cause, Design and Happiness, too, 
are suggested by the phenomena of his own nature, identical 
with those suggested by his study of the external universe ; for 
man's constitution includes a summary of nature. But as it is 
in man that the Creator has been pleased to reflect his moral 
image, the idea of Perfection underlies all his self-investiga- 
tions. 

23. But if this classification places the first, or individual 
man, at the head of the creation, the same theory applied to 
collective man would assign to every member of the human 
family " his own place." Here, indeed, a subject of immeasu- 
rable compass, and of the highest interest, opens to view. In 
our application of the principle to the three stages of nature — 
inorganic, organic, and sentient — we saw that it distributes the 
phenomena of each stage according to the order of progressive 
nature, taken in connection with the relative importance of the 
progressive steps ; and we saw that each advancing stage, by 
presenting additional phenomena, multiplied the points of com- 
parison, and thus increased our means of classification, and our 
powers of testing the truth of such classification. But the new 
characteristics which the human species presents augment the 
points of comparison between the different members of the race 
indefinitely. If the twenty-six letters of the alphabet admit of 
combinations in words and sentences, which all the books writ- 
ten, and all the sounds hitherto uttered by man, leave compara- 
tively undiminished, how unimaginable must be the combina- 
tions of which the alphabet or elements of human nature admit, 
especially when these are multiplied by all the possible varie- 
ties of man's external condition ! To say that no two men of 
all the myriads that have hved have been precisely alike, would 



836 MAN. 

amount to little. The possible diversities of which humanity 
admits are hardly as yet numerically diminished to any sensible 
amount, and could be exhausted by no conceivable number of 
generations, and within no computable tract of time. Yet the 
scientific distribution of the whole is possible. 

24. According to the method which our theory prescribes, 
1 , the classification of men is to be made from a calculation and 
comparison of all the elements which the human constitution in- 
cludes — from the lowest mechanical law and chemical property 
to its highest moral perfection. Not a single property, organ, or 
faculty is to be passed over as unimportant. 2. It ranges the 
characteristic properties of human nature on a graduated scale, 
according to which the value of each property rises as it ap- 
proaches man's highest distinction. 3. It requires that each 
group or class of men shall be formed of such individuals only as 
resemble each other more than they resemble any other human 
beings, or, as have the greatest number of important properties 
in common. 4. It provides not only for the formation of men 
into classes, but also for the arrangement of these classes in an 
ascending series, ranging according to the ideal of human per- 
fection ; for, as we have seen, it recognizes degrees of value or 
intensity in the main characteristics of the human economy. 
Consequently, the affinity of man to man is to be regarded as 
nearest, when the resemblance lies between those characteristics 
which ai'e of the highest value. 

25. According to this method, then, the highest generalization 
of which man admits, is that which places him according to his 
moral character. For we cannot here say, as we did when 
speaking of the classification of mere organic bodies, that an 
arrangement correctly formed on one function will harmonize 
with an arrangement correctly formed on another function. 
This is true, indeed, of man considered merely as an organic 
being. But he has more than organic functions ; and among 
these higher faculties, disturbance and derangement exist. If 
we class the members of the human family according to their 
physiological relations, we obtain resemblances of color, and 
physical conformation, and adopt family and national ties. If 
they are classed according to their knowledge, or their progress 
in civilization, the prior arrangement may have to be almost 
entirely broken up, and parties to be brought together which 
had before been separated ; and a union is formed of a higher 
order still. If classed according to their emotional nature — 
their tastes and wishes, and afiections — a new arrangement is 



r^ 



CHANGE. 337 

formed, and a stronger compact still. But if, now, those were 
to be selected who, besides believing the same truths, and ap- 
proving the same objects, were bent on pursuing them from an 
enlightened sense of duty to God, and from the deep feeling 
that their endless well-being depended on attaining them, we 
should have formed a class united together by the closest, high- 
est, and most enduring affinities of which we can conceive. 
This, we are Divinely assured, will form the basis of the great, 
the final, classification of our race. Owing, indeed, to the ele- 
ments of responsibility which our nature includes, no two even 
of this best and highest class present precisely the same aspect 
to the Divine government, or stand in exactly the same relation 
to it. For, in order accurately to determine that relation, the 
original constitution, physical, mental, and moral, of each, and 
of all his subsequent external circumstances, must be taken into 
account And thus it happens that the very minuteness and 
multiplicity of the points of comparison by which each man will 
be made to " stand in his lot at the end of the days,*' takes the 
work of actual classification out of our incompetent hands — 
leaving us only to "judge ourselves" individually — and refers 
the ultimate generalization of the race to Omniscience. But of 
that " number which no man can number," the first man had 
now appeared — the model and father of the species ; and of that 
final judgment the first foreshadowing was about to appear in 
his Divine arraioiiment. 



CHAPTER XVm. 



CHANGE. 



1. Will man fall ? From the moment in which he became 
the subject of moral government, this was, not unlikely, the 
great question of the intelligent universe. Consequences were 
depending on it, the least glimpse of which must have thrown 
the mere physical disruption of a planet, or of a system of worlds, 
into the shade. Among the means for forming an antecedent 
conjecture on the subject, one was, the fact that man came into 
a system of things which was already subject to a law of change. 
His lot was cast on the hne of progress at a time when succes- 
sive races of animal life already belonged to the silence of the 

29 



338 MAN. 

past, and when even the last trace of the existence of many of 
them had perished. He had joined the marcli of creation at a 
point when the worlds of the dinotherium and the mastodon had 
passed away, and their very sepulchres had been buried. His 
own body came from their dust. Parts of his physical structure 
commemorated theirs. The air he breathed had been exhaled 
by the giant ferns and ancient palm forests then lying deep and 
fossilized in the crust of the earth. The tree of life had its roots 
in a grave. The dew which " watered the whole face of the 
ground," had glittered in the light of former worlds. Traces of 
a recent chaos and creation were around him. His own exist- 
ence was the latest illustration of the law of change. 

True, the planetary changes which had preceded his coming 
were all physical and progressive ; whereas the change which 
our question contemplates as possible in man, is of a moral 
nature, and threatens to arrest all subsequent progress. But 
a second fact was, that some members of another race of 
intelligent beings, inhabiting another part of the universe, had 
actually fallen from "their first estate." On the supposition, 
then, that man and they Avere both comprehended in one 
scheme, he had come into the more advanced part of a system 
subject to moral derangement as well as to physical revolution. 
Thirdly, we have seen that the freedom with which he is en- 
dowed implies the power and possibility of sinning. However 
great or little his actual liability to sin may be, the danger is 
not metaphysically impossible. The same fearful possibility 
is pointed at, fourthly, by the susceptibilities of penitence, 
endurance, and compassion which his nature encloses. Not 
that sin was to be looked for as if for the sake of developing 
these remedial properties ; but still they appeared to contemplate 
the possibility of sin, and to form a subjective provision for 
such an alternative. And, fifthly, it might have been surmised 
that the sinful invasion of moral government as newly set up on 
earth, would form a grand occasion for the display of the Divine 
all-suificiency. Not, indeed, that the bare possibility of sin 
would be converted into a necessity expressly to afford such an 
occasion ; but that the evil would not be arbitrarily prevented ; 
and that it might not have been conceivable how, except on the 
hypothesis of some such a change, any new occasion would 
arise for a further development of the Divine resources. These 
were some of the elements which might have entered into an 
antecedent conjecture respecting the probability of human 
defection. 



CHANGE. 339 

2. "Will this stage of the Bivine procedure be sooner or later 
succeeded by another ? As the previous question related to 
human conduct, this respects the plan of the Divine operations, 
and, as such, reminds us that progression is a law of the plan. 
For, were the scheme of the Divine procedure to terminate at 
any given point, the proof of the Divine all-sufficiency for un- 
limited manifestation would terminate with it. Nor can we 
imagine ourselves to have surveyed the advancing stages of 
creation up to the coming of man, without more than suspecting 
that Ave had been looking on the successive steps of a scene 
preparatory for a new stage of the Divine procedure. Whether 
from an investigation of human nature, we should have inferred 
that the occasion for that new stage would be probably derived 
from man's defection or not, everything antecedent in the Di- 
vine procedure would have been seen combining to point to a 
coming enlargement of the manifestation. 

3. Thus we come to the great principle that the law of pro- 
gression is itself regulated by a law determining the time and 
manner of each successive stage of the advancing process. Even 
those who advocate the hypothesis of the creative progress by a 
law of natural development, cannot consistently entertain any 
valid objection against this principle. If they admit that the 
law had a Lawgiver, they must allow that every stage of its 
development was prospectively included in his plan, and that, 
for the same reason that any stage was designed to occur at all, 
there must have been a right time for its occurrence, or a reason 
vrhich made the period of its actual occurrence the right period. 
The law with which we have now to do respects the nature of 
that reasou. And whence can it come but from the creature 
or the Creator ? In other words, the reason which regulates 
the progress of creation may be one which respects the well- 
being of the creature, or the ultimate design of the Creator, or 
both combined. On the supposition that the whole scheme is 
advancing according to laws, this advance and these laws imply 
tendency and result ; if the tendency be to secure the good of 
the creature, the law of progress will be seen fulfilhng this con- 
dition, and will be regulated by it ; and if the tendency be also 
to bring into view the boundlessness of the Divine resources, 
the law of progress will be regulated in its movements by the 
attainment of this end. 

4. For example, the primitive earth was to become the scene 
of organic life, but not till it had passed through such foreseen 
changes, and had attained to such a condition as adapted it to 



340 MAN. 

the existence of life, might the law of progression be expected 
to receive another illustration. Bat when the well-being of 
this new principle — life — had been thus prepared for, had the 
Divine Omnipotence, which the inorganic creation set forth, 
been adequately displayed ? The proximate end was attained, 
was the ultimate end also ? Again, vegetable Hfe prepared the 
way for animal existence ; but when the well-being of the ani- 
mal was thus provided for, the question still remained, prior to 
its creation, whether or not the wisdom of God had been, in any 
sense, adequately illustrated. In process of time, the earth was 
sufficiently ameliorated for man's appearance, but this alone 
cannot be supposed to have determined the time of his creation. 
We are aware, indeed, that, according to the advocates of devel- 
opment by natural law, as soon as ever certain physical conditions 
were present, man would emerge into being by an inevitable 
necessity ; that the only reason for his appearance would be the 
concurrence of certain favorable organic conditions, indepen- 
dently of any Divine interposition. Now, while we freely 
admit that the time of man's creation presupposes the existence 
of innumerable conditions, organic and inorganic, it is most 
illogical to conclude, that because a thing does not exist without 
such and such conditions, therefore it must exist with them. 
This is to confound the possible with the necessary, and to pro- 
mote conditions into the place of causes. We have seen that, 
for aught that geology can show to the contrary, man might 
have appeared much earlier than he did had it so pleased his 
Creator. But when the proximate end of the animal period 
had been attained, and the well-being of man had been provided 
for, had the ultimate end of that period been in any degree 
attained ? Did the long succession of animal worlds, including 
those, also, to which they looked forwards, exhibit all the illus- 
trations of all-sufficient benevolence, which, under the circum- 
stances, might have been expected ? Had the earth existed 
long enough to justify the inference that the power, and wisdom, 
and goodness, which had shown themselves sufficient for con- 
ducting it through all the mighty and complicated changes of 
which it contained the evidence, is all-sufficient for every similar 
change of which the earth admits ? We believe that had the 
evidence of this all-sufficiency been incomplete, when, according 
to the law of progression, the earth had become adapted to 
human life, the law of progression would have waited for the 
completion. Hazardous as this sentiment may appear, it is only 
affirming that the means would have been subordinated to the 



CHANGE. 341 

end. But when we remember that we are speaking of " God 
only wise," all appearance of hazard vanishes ; for, " seeing the 
end from the beginning," He can make all his operations har- 
moniously coincide, rendering the attainment of one part of his 
design the period for commencing the attainment of another. 

5. Admitting, then, that the successive stages of creation, 
including man's introduction on earth, have not hitherto taken 
place either accidentally or capriciously, but according to a rea- 
son which respects both the well-being of the creature and the 
proof of the all-sufficiency of the Creator, we have now to ad- 
vert to this reason in relation to the first stage of the human 
dispensation, or probationary man in paradise. Here, indeed, 
we enter a domain, not only in advance of all that had gone 
before, but essentially distinct from the whole — the domain of 
law properly so called. Here, Holiness reigns over a free sub- 
ject. The Divine Governor and the gov^ned are connatural. 
Here is a second will. If the Creator has a purpose, so also 
has the creature. If God has an ultimate end to be answered 
by this stage of creation, man also has an end to answer — an end 
not necessitated and unconsciously pursued, as with the animal, 
but inteUigently and voluntarily self-purposed. And yet the 
very perfection of the Divine will demands the entire coinci- 
dence of the human will with it. To deviate from it, will be to 
deviate from perfection. To obey it, is the highest and the only 
freedom. Evidently, then, the well-being of man depends on 
the harmony of his will with the Supreme will, and requires 
that he should be made experimentally acquainted with this 
fact. Not till this proximate end has been attained may any 
change be expected to take place in man's first or probationary 
stage ; for not till then will he be prepared to take an onward 
step. TVe know, indeed — for the event declared it — that, 
from the moment accountable man began to breathe, a new dis- 
pensation impended. But if, with our present knowledge, we 
could then have been asked what it was which would make the 
time Divinely selected for the introduction of that new dispen- 
sation, the right time ? or, what it was which would fitly termi- 
nate the probationary period ? we should have replied, — when 
man has been made to comprehend his relative position in the 
universe, by understanding his freedom and his dependence, and 
not till then. How long it may last after that, or what may be 
the nature of any new economy which may be subsequently 
introduced, are distinct questions ; but the well-being of man 
requires that the Divine procedure should pause till he has 
29* 



342 MAN. 

learnt his relation to that procedure. This is his primary les- 
son, and fundamental to his happiness. Ignorant of this, he is 
liable, unconsciously, to come into collision with the Divine will 
at every step he takes. This is his great and only danger ; 
and until he is sensible of it, his endless well-being is in jeop- 
ardy. 

6. The question arises, then, were the conditions of man's 
well-being, as a dependent and accountable creature, fulfilled, 
during his probationary state? Was his freedom a reality? 
Was he apprised of the relation in which it placed him to God ? 
And had he an opportunity of verifying both his freedom and 
his dependence ? If these questions can be answered in the 
affirmative, man may expect that a new and distinct advance in 
the Divine procedure is at hand. Now, as to the first condi- 
tion — the reality of man's freedom — we have only to refer to 
our chapter on the Will, or to appeal to our own consciousness* 
Our every volition proves it. Temptation presupposes it. 
Everything around us invites us to assert it. Its existence is 
implied in our very conception of it. 

7. May it not be expected, then, that man will be apprised 
of the relation in which his freedom places him to God, or be 
furnished with the means of knowing it ? Evidently, his free- 
dom exposes him to a danger unknown to all pre-existing na- 
ture — the danger of confounding freedom with independence 
of God — of identifying the idea of power with the idea of right 
— of supposing that because he can do a thing, he may do it. 
Because his own will is a law, he is in danger of losing sight of 
every other law, and even of the Divine Lawgiver. For ages, 
his posterity imagined that their little planet was the centre of 
the solar system ; that sun and stars existed for, and moved 
around it. Had the earth itself been a conscious being, and 
indulged in the same delusion, indefinite confusion and ruin 
would almost necessarily have ensued. Yet this is only a pic- 
ture of the moral liability of the first human being, of supposing 
that he is central and supreme when he is only subordinate and 
dependent. Accordingly, as we have already seen, everything 
around him told him of its dependence. The fact that he alone 
had a free will, left all the rest of creation pointing him away 
with a direct finger, to the Will on which it depended. This 
was the great truth, which it never ceased to reiterate. His 
consciousness of his own direct Divine Parentage — the ever- 
present fact, that he was the newly-created " son of God " — 
pointed him to the same supreme Will. Though a law to him- 



CHANGE. 343 

self, he must have felt that his constitution was an imperium in 
imperio. Divine communications guided him. Divine appoint* 
ments surrounded him. In a sense more special than that it 
could be said of any of his posterity, " in God he lived, and 
moved, and had his being." 

8. But if, further, a specific intimation should be given to 
man of the responsible character of his freedom, what more 
could his grave position require, or Benevolence itself dictate ? 
Such an intimation, we have seen, was given, and given in the 
form likely to render it most memorable and effective — that 
of law. Indeed, the imperative is the only language suited to 
the will. In the next chapter, we shall see that it was a law 
— not as is generally supposed, requiring vindication, but that 
it was protective ; prescribed by Paternal Goodness ; combin- 
ing the minimum of trial with the conditional maximum of 
advantage — that it was probation made easy. Nor have we at 
present to inquire how disobedience was possible to a sinless 
being. We have only to do with the fact, as a fact, that, in 
every way short of infringing his freedom, man was protected 
from the possible abuse of that freedom. Tremendous possi- 
bility ! 

9. We have said that, from the moment when man became 
the subject of moral government, the question whether or not 
he would fall by transgression may probably have been the 
engrossing subject of the intelligent universe. Marvellous 
transformations of matter may have been taking place at the 
time in other parts of the Divine dominions, exhibiting the 
Creative Power to angelic eyes on a scale unknown before. 
But, on the supposition that these holy beings knew anything 
of the immense interest depending on man's probation, and re- 
membering the period of their own trial, we can conceive them 
turning away from even a new creation as a spectacle compara- 
tively devoid of interest. How long the period of suspense 
lasted we know not ; but during its continuance we can well be- 
lieve that they paused from many of their accustomed pursuits ; 
that, in their eyes, nature itself appeared to sympathize in the 
anxieties of the crisis ; that they even felt as if put on their own 
])robati6n again. Jealousy for the honor of God, and profound 
concern for man, may be supposed to have divided and absorbed 
their thoughts. Doubtless, as far as they saw, the probabilities 
were all in favor of a successful issue. What man ought to be, 
he already was ; what he ought not to be, was only a possibil- 
ity. But the hour of trial came, and he fell He indulged 



344 MAN. 

desire at the expense of right. A law was given him, and he 
felt its force ; but, voluntarily breaking away from the sacred 
restraint, he deranged the harmony of his own nature, disturbed 
the tranquillity of the intelligent universe, and incurred the 
penalty of transgression. Ko sign which external nature could 
have given of that crisis — her hoarsest thunder, or most 
wrathful sky — w^ould have been adequate to the magnitude of 
the occasion. It was a sorrow too deep for her tears. Man 
himself was not conscious of all its import. A new sensation 
filled his consciousness — a sense of sin. Now, first, he expe- 
rienced pain. " His eyes were opened ; " he had come to the 
" knowledge of evil." The equilibrium of his powers was dis- 
turbed; and the trembling of the solid earth under his feet 
could not have added to his sense of insecurity. The first 
cloud shaded his brow ; the first arrow entered his soul. There 
might have been '^ silence in heaven " — a solemn pause, an- 
ticipative of his doom. But he was already self-doomed. His 
own conscience, quicker than any external process, and dispen- 
sing with all the formalities of a trial, forestalled the sentence 
of the Divine Lawgiver, and was already cari-ying it into exe- 
cution. 

10. We have not now to speak of the consequences of the 
first sin ; our object is only to show that the human dispensa- 
tion is now open to a new interposition, and awaits it. Had the 
law of progress been put into operation earlier — that is, had a 
new stage of the Divine economy been introduced while the 
probation of man was yet pending, it would have virtually 
repealed the probationary stage, and have defeated its design ; 
man might. never have felt the extent of his dependence; and 
what the undisturbed issue of his trial would have been, might 
have for ever remained unknown. But his trial is now over. 
He, a dependent being, has aimed at independence. The cen- 
trifugal power of his will has overcome the centripetal law of 
dependence, and he has rushed into an orbit of his own. He 
has not merely essayed to stand alone, but has forced his way 
through a law which was meant to hold him in allegiance to his 
Maker. The abuse of the highest good can be productive only 
of the greatest evil ; and this evil man has incurred. His first 
sin has been committed. As a perfect being, his probation is 
at an end. He has outraged his Freedom, and increased his 
Dependence. From this moment, therefore, a new dipensation 
of some kind may be, sooner or later, expected. 

11. But although the proximate end of man's probation is 



^ 



CHANGE. 345 

attained, is the ultimate end of this first dispensation answered ? 
That is to say, admitting that its great design was to manifest 
the all-sufficiency of the Divine Holiness, is that final purpose, 
in any sense, attained ? The former end may have been an- 
swered, but not the latter ; for the former falls far within the 
compass of the latter. In other words, the two ends, though 
inseparably united, are distinct; for while every condition 
required by the law of man's well-being may have been ful- 
filled, the adequate illustration of the Divine Holiness may 
require something more; and the question is, whether the 
claims of this ultimate law are satisfied. Have all the illustra- 
tions of Holiness been furnished which, under the circum- 
stances, might have been expected ? 

12. Here, however, the prior question arises — furnished to 
whom ? for on the answer to this inquiry will depend the kind 
and amount of illustration necessary. If the party contemplated 
be the first man himself, doubtless he was ready to attest, from 
the depths of his inmost consciousness, " Holy, holy, holy, is 
the Lord God Almighty ! " His own constitution had been a 
proclamation of the Divine holiness to the universe. And now 
that he had violated that constitution, the pains of conscious 
guilt were a new proclamation to the same effect. We cannot 
conceive of his requiring any additional evidence, that the 
Being who had thus demonstrated His moral excellence was 
capable of accumulating the illustrations of it to any amount. 

13. Or, if the party to be convinced of the all-sufficiency of 
the Divine holiness be the intelligent beings afterwards made 
known to man under the denomination of angels, they, probably, 
were already satisfied on this point. Their own natures had 
been dedicated to this Perfection. They had passed through a 
probationary state, in which they had displayed and maintained 
it. They had seen it awfully vindicated in the doom of those 
of their race who had outraged it. They themselves were now 
confirmed in it — lived in the near and open vision of it. 
Although, therefore, they rejoiced in the new aspect under 
Vv'liich it appeared in the constitution and relations of man, it 
may have added nothing to their mere conviction of the all- 
sufficiency of the Divine Holiness. As evidence of this suffi- 
ciency, their own history was enough. If proof only were 
aimed at, that which man's history supplied would have been 
in excess. Up to the point of holiness, they saw in his history 
a recapitulation of their own ; and that, probably, which espe- 
cially awakened their expectations related to the coming econ- 



346 MAN. 

omy, which, according to the law of progress, would carry the 
Divine procedure beyond that point. 

14. If, however, the party to be satisfied be ourselves, we 
must be careful to limit our expectations according to the spe- 
cial nature of the case. In the original statement of the law, 
now under consideration, I remarked that the time for an ad- 
vance in any given department of the Divine procedure would 
of course be determined in a manner, and for a reason, differing 
with the particular nature and design of the department — first, 
by each existing stage passing through all the combinations and 
changes of which it admits, before another begins ; or, secondly, 
by its existing long enough to show that it involves all the ne- 
cessary possibilities for answering such and such ends, if its con- 
tinuance were permitted; or, thirdly, until it has sufficiently 
taught the specific truth, and attained the proximate and par- 
ticular end, for which it was originated. And the obvious 
ground and reason for this is, that were any stage of the Divine 
procedure to be replaced or superseded a moment before it had, 
in one or other of these ways, demonstrated the all-sufficiency 
of God for that particular stage, the ultimate end would not be 
answered. 

15. Now as to the first of these conditions, it evidently is not 
applicable to this opening stage of the human dispensation. The 
only sense in Avhich it could be supposed to apply, would be by 
imagining that, instead of one human being, innumerable men 
might have been put on probation in every conceivable variety 
of relation to success ; and that they might have been thus put on 
trial either contemporaneously or successively. Probably, 
something analogous to the contemporaneous method was ac- 
tually adopted in the instance of angelic probation. And, in 
the history of the human race, both the contemporaneous and 
the successive methods exist in the only respects in whiali they 
can be conceived of in relation to such a race. Every member 
of the human family, in every generation, has a personal proba- 
tion, however different it may be from the trial of the progeni- 
tor of the race. And our attention, in subsequent discussions, will 
have to be very much directed to the important relations of this 
individual and universal probation. But to ask for either of 
these methods in an absolute form is, first, to ask for an essen- 
tially different race of beings ; a race not successively produced, 
nor mutually influencing each other ; whereas, we are at present 
asking for adequate illustrations of the Divine Holiness in the 
constitution and original condition of the actual man. And, 



CHANGE. 347 

secondly, it is to ask, in effect, for an entirely different dispen- 
sation ; a final, and not a progressive one. For in the case sup- 
posed, no conceivable variety of probation could satisfy. The 
trial of innumerable individuals, and innumerable generations^ 
would still admit of augmentation, and so on indefinitely. 
Whereas, we are inquiring whether or not the probationary 
stage of man's history, considered as one of many in a progres- 
sive scheme, exhibited the holiness of Gk>d in a light adequately 
illustrative of its all-sufficiency. 

16. If, then, the first of the conditions specified had not, and, 
from the nature of the Divine plan, could not have been com- 
plied with, during this probationary stage, had the second con- 
dition been fulfilled ? That is, were the actual constitution and 
the trial of man, as a subject of moral government, worthy of a 
Being of perfect holiness ? 

Now, we may point to all the preceding portions of this vol- 
ume for a reply ; for every part of human nature, and every 
law of every part, terminate in man's moral relations. Could 
we have known the constitution of the angelic beings who pre- 
ceded man, as subjects of moral government, we should proba- 
bly have regarded the question before us as already, and for ever, 
determined. Respecting their original state we know but little ; 
we know, indeed, that now, in what is to them their future, or 
final state, they are spoken of as spiritual, as man himself is 
destined to be in his future state. But the fact that only some 
of them fell from their first estate, proves that they sustain a 
very different relation to each other from that which men mu- 
tually sustain. Now that a second race of moral beings should 
have been made, differently constituted from the first, and yet 
equally endowed with every element of responsibility, would 
seem to be at once a test and proof of the Divine all-sufficiency 
surpassing the requirements of the case. That the constitution 
of this being should include matter and spirit ; that is, necessity 
and freedom, mechanism and causality ; and that in the exercise 
of his self-government he should recognize a right and a wrong 
in liis every voluntary movement, assimilating him to the Di- 
vine government, would seem to exhibit a triumph over the 
greatest difficulties, if not even a choice of the difficulties, for 
the sake of triumphing over them. That this being, though 
related to time and place, should be capable of conceiving of mo- 
ral distinctions necessary, immutable, and eternal ; that though 
having to take up some of his pleasures from the dust, he should 
be able to reach for others, his noblest, to the throne of God ; 



348 MAN. 

and that, though in his nature allied to earth, he should feel 
himself capable of immortality, and destined for it — all these 
are further enhancements of our views of the Divine all-suffi- 
ciency. And then, that the being thus constituted should have 
been placed in a position in which, though sinless, his fall was 
possible, and only possible ; in which, that is, his trial and his 
power were so nicely balanced as to leave him perfectly free ; 
a position from which he could command a view of endless life, 
with the prospect of taking on with him ever-accumulating 
means of enjoyment as the result of obedience ; what more can 
be necessary to demonstrate the sufficiency of which we speak ? 
And, finally, when this being had sinfully violated law, that it 
should then have come to hght that he was so constituted as to 
show that sin is possible, and even punishable, without at all 
impairing his accountability ; that sin is self-punishment ; and 
that, as such, he could not commit even his first sin without 
eliciting at once the hostility of Holiness, and his own vindica- 
tion of its claims ; what more could Holiness itself do in order 
to proclaim its all-sufficiency ? 

17. The question relates not now to the Benevoience of God ; 
nor to any possible displays of the Divine Holiness essentially 
different from the actual one ; nor do we ask whether Holiness 
demonstrated its perfection by doing all that it could do, by ex- 
hausting itself, so to speak, in the first stage of the human dis- 
pensation. Yet this is the kind of evidence of the Divine per- 
fection which some persons inconsiderately look for. Whereas 
the existence of such evidence is not only inconceivable in 
itself, but would, if it were possible for it to be realized, defeat 
the very end of its existence. For the attainment of that end 
— the display of all-sufficient holiness in the eyes of finite in- 
telligence — requires that the display be progressive ; that it 
include displays other than the creation and probation of holy 
beings, and additional to them ; that it prove itself equal to every 
crisis that may occur in the system created ; otherwise, it would 
be justly objected that the proof of its all-sufficiency was want- 
ing. Accordingly, the manifestation of Holiness is still in pro- 
gress. The subsequent display of other perfections has not ter- 
minated that of Holiness ; they co-exist and co-operate together. 
If, for a moment, we should feel, then, as if that primary display 
of holiness were less ample and glorious than might possibly 
have been expected, we are to remember that the very power 
we possess of forming such a conception shows the folly of en- 
tertaining it, for the same power must have belonged potentially 



CHANGE. 349 

to the first man. And, further, if our power of conceiving the 
idea of all-sufficient holiness have been developed by the subse- 
quent displays of that perfection, we are to remember that all 
these subhme displays were made possible by that primary il- 
lustration of it. In forming our estimate of that illustration, 
therefore, we must be careful not to measure it by a scale of 
subsequent formation, and applicable only to subsequent dis- 
plays of holiness ; for this is to object, not so much to the suffi- 
ciency of that primary manifestation, as to its subsequent pro- 
gressiveness ; as well as to forget that in that earliest exhibition 
of holiness were contained the germ and promise of all that has 
been since made manifest. Accordingly, in the creation of man, 
the Divine Being is represented as proposing to produce an 
Image of his own Holiness — a being in whom He should be- 
hold the reflection of his own moral excellence. Having made 
man, He is further represented as pronouncing this new moral 
representation of Himself "good" — sufficient — satisfactory. 
And although that first economy was not of protracted duration, 
it lasted long enough to show (for events of measureless magni- 
tude may take place in a moment) that it included infinite pos- 
sibilities. While the result of that economy showed that its 
Author was as able to vindicate holiness as He was to make a 
being capable of it ; that He was sufficient for all the emer- 
gencies of the dispensation. 

18. As to the third of the conditions named — that the econ- 
omy continue until it has sufficiently taught the specific truth, 
and attained the proximate and particular end for which it was 
originated — this we have already seen fulfilled in the former 
part of this chapter, on the law which determined the period of 
change in relation to man's well-being. "With every suitable 
inducement to stand, man had fallen. Not satisfied with free- 
dom, he had essayed independence. He, the limited, had at- 
tempted the unlimited. Left exposed only at a single point, he 
had failed to guard even that. His moral power, designed to 
ennoble and raise his sensitive nature to its own standing, had 
allowed itself to be lured from its regal height by that very na- 
ture, and had debased itself to the dust. Man's representative 
trial is at an end. Each of all his innumerable descendants, 
indeed, will pass through a personal trial suited to his altered 
position ; and all the circumstances and results of every such 
trial will be equitably adjudged. But never more can he pass 
through probation with the same advantages — with a nature 
derived immediately from God, specially protected by Him, 

30 



S^ MAN. 

and exempted from all the influence of evil example. In the 
very act of aiming at self-sufficiency, he has not only proved 
his natural and necessary insufficiency, but has actually parted 
with the secret of his strength. And thus the first great prac- 
tical lesson of man's dependence has been written out at length, 
and deposited in the ark of man's history. And now also the 
Holiness which had made man in its own image appears, as 
Justice, to affirm the rectitude of his own self-judgment. Holi- 
ness encompasses the dispensation. The moment which saw 
man's crown fall, saw the radiance of Holiness at its highest. 
The act which made man feel his insufficiency called forth a 
new display of the all-sufficiency of hohness. A new Perfec- 
tion, indeed, was about to arise in man's horizon. Mercy was 
on the wing ; but not until the rectitude of the Divine govern- 
ment was adequately illustrated, could " the fulness of time " 
for mercy have arrived. 



O 




SECOND PART. 

THE REASON OF THE METHOD. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Sect. 1. — That part of the reason which helongs to marCs con- 
stitution, and involves his well-being. 

1. All the preceding laws respect the method of the Divine 

procedure in relation to the constitution, the condition, and the 
destiny of man. The reason for this method is now to be con- 
sidered. In the original statement of the law relating to this 
reason, we saw ground to expect that the beings by whom the 
Divine manifestation is to be understood, appreciated, volunta- 
rily promoted, and enjoyed, must be constituted in harmony with 
the laws of the objective universe, or that these laws will be 
found to have been established in prospective harmony with the 
designed constitution and the destiny of the subjective mind 
which is to expound and to profit by them. According to our 
theory of the Divine manifestation, then, the reason will be two- 
fold, the first part being founded in the constitution of the 
creature by whom the method is to be studied, and involving 
his well-being ; and the second part relating to his destiny, and 
so involving, in addition, the glory of the Divine Creator. 
Having considered each of these in separate sections, we shall 
occupy a third section in applying both to the first man. 

2. It must be obvious, that if man is to understand the sys- 
tem of created things into which he has come, it must be per- 
vaded by laws, or constructed according to a plan in harmOny 
with his intellectual constitution. The part on which we are 
now entering assumes the existence of such a plan ; and the 
treatise on the Pre-adamite Earth was principally devoted to 
the proof and illustration of it. In the midst of a chaos " with- 
out form and void," man's mind itself would be chaotic. The 
subjective would reflect the objective. Darkness would be up- 



352 MAN. 

on the face of his deep. If the outer world is to be read by 
him, there must " be light." The uniformities or laws in ques- 
tion were necessary, indeed, in order to the existence of the 
things themselves. A creation without law or plan is incon- 
ceivable. And hence, for antecedent periods immeasurable, 
such a law-pervaded creation had existed for the attainment, 
immediately, of organic and sentient ends alone. But on the 
eve of man's arrival, the uniformities of Nature were recalled 
from their temporary derangement, in order to the attainment 
of additional and loftier ends. 

3. A school was to be prepared for man's education ; and the 
great lessons of creation were re-set. Hence the new reason for 
the laws of succession, dependence, and order, without which 
man would possess^ his powers of observation in vain, and crea- 
tion would be only and truly " a fortuitous concourse of atoms;" 
and for that law of all-connecting relationship, without which, 
induction would be impossible, and inquiry would be constantly 
baffled and brought to a pause, but owing to which, man is con- 
stantly ascending to higher and wider generalizations, and an 
endless multitude of parts become a united whole ; and for those 
laws of progression and activity, by which history is made pos- 
sible ; and, in a word, for that law of analogy, without which he 
could not take even a first inductive step, for Nature would fur- 
nish him with no hint respecting the direction in which he should 
proceed ; but by which he now possesses a clue for threading its 
most intricate labyrinths, and may find himself satisfactorily ris- 
ing from physical science to natural theology, and thence to the 
domain of Revelation. So that in appointing the actual laws or 
uniformities of the inorganic world, God was only saying, in 
effect. Let the objective conditions of astronomy, physics, and 
chemistry exist. In appointing the uniformities of organized 
bodies, He was providing the objective conditions of botany in 
its various branches. Aiad in arranging the uniformities of sen- 
tient being, the external conditions of animal physiology, classi- 
fication, and the different branches ot scientific zoolog}^, were 
provided. In other words, the Divine Creator was practically 
saying, Let all the objective conditions of these various sciences 
be ready, that when man, the destined minister and interpreter 
of Nature, shall come, the sciences themselves may be possible. 

4. All beyond these objective conditions, then, man ,was to 
bring in his own constitution. These conditions, prior to his 
coming, were, scientifically considered, mere unmeaning uni- 
formities. They were laws only for the Divine Lawgiver — 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 353 

modes or rules according to which He governed and sustained 
Nature. If* they are to be laws for man, his mind must, in so 
far, resemble the mind of the Lawgiver. They are to be 
manifestations of the law-working mind of the Deity to the law- 
conceiving mind of man. They only form the objective signs 
of the Divine meaning — God's symbolic autograph to man ; all 
the subjective conditions for understanding the writing belonging 
to the mind addressed. Hence the reason for man's powers of 
observation, classification, and induction, without which all the 
uniformities of Nature would exist, as far as he is concerned, 
entirely in vain. These powers or properties of his mind are 
themselves uniformities, answering to those in external Nature ; 
but with this immense difference, that man, the subject of them, 
is himself conscious of them as uniformities ; so that, to him, 
they become laws, governing his anticipations. But, by this 
very consciousness, a new world is opened to him — the world 
of his own interpreting mind. He can not only understand 
external Nature ; he can also analyze and explore the mind 
with which he understands it. He, the understanding subject, 
can become an understood object. He can take his perceptions, 
thoughts, and conjectures, of yesterday, and place them before 
liun for examination, just as if they were phenomena belonging 
to the external world. Indeed, the creation of a second human 
mind, endowed with the power of imparting its thoughts, actu- 
ally adds a mental to his prior material world. Here, the v«ry 
laws of all-connecting relationship and analogy which he before 
recognized in the external world, are found to pervade, in a 
higher sense, the entire range of his mental phenomena ; for 
here they furnish their own illustration. Not one of them all 
could be absent without rendering the intellectual kncfwkdge of 
himself impossible. Here, also, he finds the ideas of which the 
laws themselves are only the expression — ideas of externality 
and number, of force and motion, of likeness and design. So 
that, in constituting the human mind, the Creator was saying, in 
effect. Let the subjective conditions of science be added to the 
already existing objective conditions. While, in adding these 
subjective conditions. He was adding the materials of a science 
fundamental to all the rest — the science of anthropology — of 
man in the union of his spiritual and animal nature, or psy- 
chology and physiology. To the question, therefore, why man is 
constituted as he is : why he reaches the external world through 
a body, and reacts upon it and upon himself by a mind, and 



354 MAN. 

why he is conscious of both ? the first reply is, That art and 
science might be possible. 

5. But science, strictly speaking, is not philosophy. It gives 
an account of things, but does not account for them. If, there- 
fore, the creation, including man, is to be known and appreciated 
by him as the product and manifestation of God, it must be 
characterized by other laws and properties than those necessary 
for mere science, and man must possess a sensitive and emo- 
tional ^s well as an intellectual constitution. The province of 
science is to state, not to explain. Persons are apt to confound 
the mere multiplication and arrangement of phenomena with the 
explanation of them. Thus, according to M. Comte, gravitation, 
as the law which appears to bind together all phenomena, is 
henceforth to be regarded as their ultimate and sufficient expla- 
nation. But, so far from explaining them, it only aggregates and 
generalizes them. If the gravitation of the stone be a mystery, 
the discovery that the entire planet gravitates is not an expla- 
nation of the mystery, but an addition to it ; and the further 
discovery that the solar system gravitates, and gravitates in a 
calculable manner, is only a further enlargement of the wonder. 
Here is the all-connecting chain ; where is the power that made 
it, and the hand that sustains it ? What should we think of a 
pretended explanation of the structure of a steam-engine which 
assumed that it had sprung out of the earth like a tree, or which 
preserved a profound silence respecting the fact that it was made? 
Surely, then, no account of the universe, which keeps its origin 
out of sight, can be accepted as philosophy, without involving 
errors and evils proportioned to the supreme importance of the 
subject ! Accordingly, we have seen that it is covered with 
marks of contingency and dependence, and that man is so con- 
stituted as to infer from them an independent Creator. Were 
he destitute of the power of interpreting these marks aright, it 
would not be the means of manifesting God to him, but would 
only manifest itself, disclose its own properties, and partially 
proclaim its own nature. Instead of referring him to God, it 
would literally stand between him and the Creator, and would 
tend to enclose him in its ow^n material mechanism. But he is 
constituted expressly to recognize them ; and hence it is only 
natural for him to inquire into the origin of things, and, on find- 
ing that nothing in the things themselves can account for it, it is 
further natural for him to refer their origin to God. 

For the same reason, man's constitution is stored with ulti- 
mate facts — facts which admit of no self-explanation, but which 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 355 

repose on truths beyond themselves. And hence, too, an ex- 
amination of his mind, brings these necessary truths to hght. 
His mind cannot act without them. They belong to its con- 
stitution. He tinds himself presupposing them in every in- 
quiry. As a being who is himself capable of causing, design- 
ing, enjoying, and governing, he is set down in the midst of 
things caused and designed, as well as of gratifications, and 
laws, in order that he might find himself face to face with the 
[)roofs of another Being capable of acting on a scale indefinitely 
gi'cater, and tiiat he might refer all the power and wisdom, the 
goodness and the holiness manifested, to that other exalted 
Being. So that in constituting man, the Divine Creator was 
saying, in effect. Let philosophy be possible, the philosophy 
which ascends from signs to the things signified, from laws to 
the knowledge of the Lawgiver. To the question, therefore, 
why man is made to recognize the contingent, the ultimate, and 
the necessary ? the only reply is, in order that he might have a 
natural theology ; that he might find himself in a temple in 
which every object is symbolic of the Divine presence, and is 
ever inviting him to acts of grateful self-improving worship. 

6. But, chiefly, if the Divine procedure is to be known and 
appreciated by man in such a manner as to provide for his 
self-development, a voluntary or self-controlling power must be 
added to his intellectual and sensitive constitution. Such a 
power we have seen that he possesses. We shall now see, not 
only that this is the grand peculiarity of man's nature, but that 
it involves conditions accounting for much which is commonly 
deemed mysterious in the Divine arrangements both of the 
human constitution, and of the universe at large. As he is an 
intellectual being, he is in a school with all the means of self- 
tuition at his disposal. As he is a being intellectual and emo- 
tional, his school becomes a temple, in which objects innumera- 
ble compete for his admiration and regard. But as he is, in ad- 
dition, a voluntary being, both the school and the temple become 
a government, in which every part of his nature is under law. 
He is a moral being whose every property and power is on pro- 
bation, and every part of the system into which he has come is 
arranged in relation to it. 

7. Elsewhere we have seen that man, as an organized being, 
and his planetary habitation, are specially adapted to each 
other. So that if the question were asked why the strength of 
his bones, the power of his muscles, and the resistance of his 
blood-vessels are as they are, neither specifically greater nor 



356 MAN. 

less, the answer is — because he was not meant to inhabit 
Jupiter or Mercury, but the Earth. In a similar manner, if he 
is voluntarily to " till the ground," the cultivable nature of the 
soil must bear some proportion to his means of subduing and 
rendering it fertile. If those means are reduced below a cer- 
tain point, he will abandon the attempt in despair ; if they are 
increased, or made unnecessary, beyond a certain point, the 
requisite incitements to effort will be wanting. So that if it 
be asked, why it is that the earth does not supersede man's 
labor by spontaneous fertility, the inquirer might be referred to 
those parts of the inhabited globe where this condition is most 
nearly realized, for a reply. "The finer the climate and 
the fewer man's wants, the more, generally speaking, he sinks 
towards the condition of the lower animals." " The heart is 
hardest in the softest climes; the passions flourish, the affec- 
tions die." If the organic world is to be the means, not of 
depressing, but of developing, his nature, it must exhibit neither 
a bewildering irregularity on the one hand, nor a tame and un- 
instructive sameness on the other. Accordingly it is so consti- 
tuted that, without either forcing its lessons, or dispensing with 
attention, it invites observation, and rewards well-directed dili- 
gence of every kind and degree. For the same reason, the 
world of sentient being is so made as to exhibit a medium be- 
tween a disheartening depth and diversity on the one hand, and 
a dull unexciting superficiality on the other. The result of the 
former extreme would be, that the volume of nature would 
never be opened ; and the result of the latter, that it would be 
shut almost as soon as opened. But constituted as it is, its laws 
are neither so obscure as to defy his diligence, nor so obvious as 
to force themselves on his involuntary notice. Its objects are 
so formed as to call him to activity, and to give him lessons on 
self-government ; its secrets so hid as to invite his discovery, 
and to correct his pre-judgments ; and its events so intimately 
and universally related as to reveal to his attentive eye the fact, 
that all nature is united in a close net-work of mutual connec- 
tions and dependence. 

And, on the same account, the labyrinth of man's own nature, 
considered as an object of study, must not be so accessible as 
to cost him no effort, or it will yield him no interest ; neither 
must it be inextricably entangled by exceptional circumstances, 
or it will defy his utmost diligence and application. In the for- 
mer case, he could not be said to leai'n ; and in the latter, his 
constitution could not be said to teach. But, formed as he is. 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 357 

the law of analogy alone becomes in his hand a clue with which, if 
he will, he may thread the most labyrinthine recesses of his con- 
sciousness, and emerge to find that he is an integral part of a 
law-pervaded scheme of Divine manifestation. 

8. From these very general remarks on the objective condi- 
tions of the method, let us consider more particularly some of 
its subjective conditions, and their inevitable consequences. We 
begin with man's sensational perceptions. Now, bearing in 
mind his voluntary and moral nature, it is obvious that there is 
a sense in which his sensible impressions must be optional, and 
in which this option must be bounded by limits. Accordingly,, 
while he cannot choose what impressions he shall receive from 
certain objects and in certain circumstances, he can determine, 
to an extent amounting to freedom, whether or not he will place 
himself in a given relation to such objects. But the enjoyment 
of this power brings Avith it liabilities without number. Pro- 
perly speaking, indeed, there are no fallacies of the senses what- 
ever ; their laws are fixed. But man may rashly make them: 
the occasion of erroneous inferences ; or may confound the tes- 
timony of his acquired with that of his natural perceptions ; or 
may draw his conclusions in ignorance of the physical laws 
which are involved; or, while his organs of sense are disor- 
dered. These are B-eid's four divisions of the so-called falla- 
cies of the senses.* So also our perception, as given in con- 
sciousness, testifies to the existence of an external world. But 
in his admirable dissertation already referred to. Sir W. Ham- 
ilton has shown that " five great variations from truth, and na- 
ture may be conceived ; and all of these have actually found 
their advocates according as the testimony of consciousneSvS, in 
the fact of perception, is wholly, or is partially, rejected : " f — 
nihilism ; or the absolute identity of mind and matter — whence 
pantheism ; or idealism — the object educed from the subject j 
or materialism — the subject educed from the object ; or a hypo- 
thetical realism which rejects the testimony of consciousness to 
our knowledge of an external world, yet inconsistently affirms 
the existence of that world : while, from these general views, 
other more special divisions branch off* in various directions. 
The creative fiat, Let there he light, made a world of shadows 
possible ; and the creation of a voluntary being such as man, 
capable and conscious of sensational perceptions, made possible, 
a state in which he might either wander and lose himself amidst 

* Essay, ii. c. 22. t Page 748 



358 MAN. 

a world of shadows of his own casting, or in which he might 
emerge and live in the light of truth. 

9. As a being capable of attaining conviction on evidence, he 
finds himself surrounded by objects soliciting attention, and in- 
viting to certain conclusions. But, for the same reason that 
there is any evidence at all, that evidence must be supplied only 
in " weight and measure." Its strength is felt, not necessarily, 
but according to the degree of attention given to it ; but atten- 
tion itself is a voluntary power. It has laws ; but just as the 
objects of nature do not present themselves drawn up in rank 
and file, but await his classification, so he is left to evolve the 
very laws on which all his generalizations are to proceed. But 
even this power, "in the light of which dwell dominion and the 
power of prophecy," exposes him to numerous sources of error. 
He is liable to the scepticism which arises from overlooking the 
facts — that proof, as a process, is not universally necessary nor 
possible ; * that different subjects require different kinds of evi- 
dence ; that all evidence, not demonstrative, admits of degrees ; 
that the convincing power of all such evidence depends materi- 
ally on the state of the mind ; that the right order of examining 
the claims of a system is to look first at its proofs, not at the 
objections to it ; and that there is a substantial sense in which 
the belief of all moral truth is voluntary. And thus every 
increase of power involves a proportionate increase of liability. 

10. If man is to reason^ his mind must be constituted to re- 
ceive certain propositions without proof; otherwise his reason- 
ing would be a chain suspended from nothing. But even these 
primary and self-evident truths, by the possession of which he 
is made a sharer of Divine knowledge, must not proclaim them- 
selves so as to prejudice his responsible freedom. That they 
are really present to his mind is clear from the amount of truth 
which he has already excogitated, and is ever increasing. That 
their development, and application are optional is equally clear ; 
for experience has shown that they render him liable to make 
his own mind the measure of the universe ; to confound the 
difficult with the impossible, and the impossible with that of which 
it is merely difficult to conceive ; to become impatient of obser- 
vation and experiment, " building a world upon hypothesis," and 
rendering a Novum Organum necessary, in order to recall him 
from the region of conjecture ; to idealize the universe, and 
even to consider all reasoning respecting his ideas impossible. 

* He that thinks all things to be demonstrable takes away demonstra- 
tion itself. — Prod, in Timce, p. 176, fol. 



o 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 359 

11. Imagination, by giving wings to the mind, enables it to 
rise from the present and the actual, and to seek the invisible 
and the possible. Falling short of its proper activity, it leaves 
the mind to gravitate to the centre when it should be soaring to 
the circumference, ignorant of its heirship to a boundless em- 
pire. On the other hand, if that activity be unrestrained, the 
actual and the urgent no longer counterpoise the distant and 
the unreal. Everything is measured by imaginary standards, 
and viewed through painted media. Man inhabits a phantom 
universe. Science may be retarded for ages by the Pythago- 
rean doctrine of perfect numbers. Life may be wasted in lis- 
tening for an inaudible strain — the fancied music of the spheres. 
Even an Aristotle may teach that the celestial motions are regu- 
lated by laws proper to themselves ; till at length the heavens 
may present to the eye of the mind " cycle on epicycle — orb on 
orb " — an inexplicable enigma of circles. " The world (says 
Plato) is God's epistle to mankind ; " but men, taxing their in- 
ventive powers, may come to conjecture the contents of the 
Divine autograph, instead of opening and diligently reading it. 
In actual hfe, the beautiful may come to be divorced from the 
true and the good. Instead of laboring to improve the actual 
and the present, men may <iome to sigh for a rainbow home 
which recedes or dissolves as they advance to reach it. Or the 
sense of the beautiful may even come to be torn down in the 
temple of the soul, and be replaced by the worship of myths and 
monsters, compared with which the signs of the zodiac may be 
divine realities. But if the addition of this power brings with 
it all these liabilities, how important, we might have thought, 
that it should be restrained within certain limits. That power 
of restraint exists, but it is lodged with man himself. And 
forcibly to interfere with it, would justly empower him to com- 
plain that, while held responsible as a free agent, he was yet 
coerced as a machine. 

12. Language, by covering the entire range of thought and 
feeling, more than doubles the liabilities, intellectual and moral, 
of the human being. As the representative of the mind, language 
must, on the one hand, have laws corresponding to the laws of 
thought. But, on the other, these laws, like those of thought, 
must not be mechanically inviolable ; otherwise, the freedom of 
the mind itself, is, to that extent, destroyed. The consequence 
of this freedom, however, is the following four-fold possibiHty ; 
first, the inaccurate and inadequate representation of the thing 
signified ; hence falsehood, in its various degrees, the employ- 



360 MAN. 

ment of vague and ambiguous terms, and the literal use of 
metaphorical language. Secondly, the identification of names 
with things, hence realism — the belief in the independent and 
separate existence of whatever has a separate name. Indeed, 
the Greeks had but one name (logos) for both reason and speech. 
Words triumphed over facts. As if every name were a sun- 
drawn picture of the object to which it referred — a photograph 
of nature — they studied physics in terms, and not in things. 
Language became a wall between them and the realities of 
nature. Thirdly, the tyranny of words over the mind. " Men 
believe (says Bacon) that their reason governs their v/ords ; but 
it often happens that words have power enough to react upon 
reason." The consequence is, that the sign survives the depar- 
ture of the thing signified ; the names of false conceptions act 
as incantations, recalling their spectral forms long after the 
conceptions themselves have been exploded ; and language, 
having once embodied a doctrine, tends to give it permanence 
quite irrespective of its truth or error. Fourthly, the different 
conceptions which the speaker and the hearer may have asso- 
ciated with the same word ; hence, the possibility of receiving 
false impressions instead of true, as well as of endless verbal 
disputes. 

13. Looks, tones, tears, gestures — parts of the great economy 
of natural language — by increasing man's power for good, pro- 
portionally increase his power for evil. The fountain which 
supplies the tear of pity may supply the tear of hypocrisy also. 
And who would exchange the muscular play and sunlight of 
the human countenance for the immovable rigidity of a statue, 
because the same muscles can convert the features into a living 
mask ? As a being strangely compounded of matter and mind, 
and living at a point where two worlds meet, man can view 
everything in a ludicrous, as well as in a solemn light. The 
power of a smile involves the power of a sneer. And the 
laughter which shakes down an old temple of superstition, and 
ridicules out of existence a folly proof against reasoning, may 
be employed also to intimidate truth, and to put virtue out of 
countenance. 

14. Man's emotional susceptibilities are essential to his prac- 
tical appreciation of the objects around him. As such, they 
stand between his intellectual acts and his volitions — following 
the former, preceding and influencing the latter. His responsible 
liberty requires, however, that while his emotions are necessarily 
determined by his mental perceptions, these perceptions them- 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 361 

selves should be, indirectly, at least, voluntary. But this 
momentous addition to man's constitution may give occasion to 
the following evils : by unduly depreciating its distinct functions, 
and confounding it, as Hobbes did, with perception itself, virtuous 
feelings may be considered nothing more than just reasonings, 
and evil passions may pass for mistaken judgments, and schools 
of philosophy be formed prejudicial to the interests of morality. 
By unduly exalting the function of the emotions, reason itself 
may be depreciated, and schools of musing mysticism be warmed 
into existence. While by the false relation to the intellect^ 
which the emotions may come to sustain, either in defect or 
excess, all those thronging errors and evils may ensue which 
Bacon has classed under the idola or images of the tribe, the 
den, the market-place, and the theatre. 

15. The relation of the emotions to the will brings us into 
the moral domain of man's nature. Here, as we have seen, he 
is open to a four-fold influence. All the objects around him 
appeal either to his appetites, his self-love, his benevolent 
affections, or to his sense of duty, in its highest form of love to 
Grod. Here, then, are four great problems to be solved, each 
of them requiring a complicated balancing of influence, com- 
pared with which the nicely -adjusted play of forces in the phy- 
sical world is only an emblem of simplicity aaid ease. 

As man is a creature of instincts and appetites, the great 
question to be solved relates to the reconciliation of his material 
and his spiritual nature. There was a period in the progress 
of creation when the problem had yet to be solved, how matter 
could be reconciled with motion, and how the centripetal force 
of the planet could be reconciled with the centrifugal. How 
can the laws of inorganic matter be made to consist with the 
assimilating power of life ? How can a material organ be made 
the occasion of pleasurable sensation ? But all the more 
difficult parts of these problems are now included in the more 
profound adjustment of the animal and the rational, the ma- 
terial and the spiritual, in the constitution of free responsible 
man. 

The question is not, how may the spiritual escape absorption 
from the natural ? nor the converse ; but how may the two be 
adjusted in harmonious and responsible co-existence? Now, 
assuming the constitution of man, it is evident that there must 
have been limits assigned to all the created objects which ap- 
peal to it — as to their number, form, and sensible properties, 
their accessibleness, the combinations of which they admit, and 

31 



362 MAN. 

the purposes to which they may be applied. Or, assuming the 
constitution of nature, it is equally clear that there must have 
been limits assigned to man's susceptibilities of impression from 
it, and to his powers over it. It is easy to conceive of such a 
change in man's organization as should render him insensible 
to the appeals of external objects, and annoyed by the calls of 
animal appetite. Every voice from without would only whis- 
per timidly from the dust ; while the voice of reason should 
thunder, and his consciousness be written over with the great 
truths of his spiritual nature in characters of fire. But this 
would make virtue impossible, for there would be nothing to 
resist. Rather, virtue would then consist in the cultivation of 
the appetites, and the development of the passions. On the 
other hand, if his animal incitements are to be such as to afford 
him the occasion of self-improvement, they may also prove the 
means of his self-degradation. What if the sensuous should 
come to predominate over the spiritual ? The forms of mate- 
rialism might come to be " the grand idolatry, by which, in all 
times, the true worship, that of the Invisible, will be polluted 
and withstood." Every object might then be valued only as it 
ministered to the gratification of the passions. Nature itself 
might come to be employed as a great storehouse of animal 
stimulants. The methods of self-indulgence be reduced to a fin- 
ished and costly science ; rewards be offered for the invention 
of a new pleasure ; and man be distinguished from the brute 
chiefly by his greater sensuous capacity. 

16. As a being capable of self-love, or of a regard for his 
well-being on the whole, a new difficulty arises — that of bal- 
ancing the present with the future. Besides the problem of 
reconciling one part of his constitution with another, there is 
now the additional task of harmonizing the claim of every 
passing period of life with that of existence on the whole. 
These two claimants might be easily brought into antagonism. 
The urgencies and attractions of the present are liable to blind 
him to the demands of the future : — How many present wants 
shall he have ? — how pressing shall they be ? — how varied in 
kind and degree ? — and of what increase shall they admit ? 
On the contrary, the stupendous prospects of the future may 
cause him to forget even that there is a present, or may entirely 
incapacitate him for its duties. How high shall the solemn 
veil be raised? — how far shall he be able to project his 
thoughts within ? — and what objects shall there meet his view ? 
These opposite questions have been so answered in man's con- 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 363 

stitudon as to give him the power of practically reconciling 
them together. But this very power implies the responsible 
liberty of placing the two in conflict ; in which case, present 
victory, on either side, is ultimate defeat. 

17. The motives implied in the social affections present new 
and additional difficulties. How can man's well-being as an indi- 
vidual be made to consist with the free activity of other individ- 
uals ? " Man stands in the midst of the external world, and the 
most important element in that which surrounds him, is his con- 
tact with those who resemble him in their nature and their des- 
tiny. Now, if free beings are to exist in such contact, side by 
side, mutually aiding, and not obstructing one another in their 
development, this only becomes possible by our recognizing an 
invisible boundary, within which the existence and the activity 
of every individual must have a sure and undisturbed territory. 
The rule by which that boundary, and, consequently, this un- 
disturbed territory, is determined, is Law. Therewith, at the 
same time, is also ascertained the relationship and the difference 
between law and morality. Law assists morality, not by exe- 
cuting her commands, but by securing the free development of 
the moral power which dwells in every individual's will." But 
why is not a list of all right actions inscribed on the human 
heart, and the conscience made an infallible index of all good 
feelings, and the hand withered, and the eye and the tongue re- 
strained, at the very commencement of every offence by some 
admonitory pain ? Because man is a moral being, and not a 
machine, and is capable of becoming a law unto himself. But, 
then, the freedom which this state implies, leaves him open to 
at least a fourfold possibility. His social laws, customs, and 
manners, may be at variance with morality ; or the laws them- 
selves, being in harmony with right, he may yet violate them ; 
or, mistaking the province of law, he may attempt to carry its 
jurisdiction where it can neither define nor command ; or, in 
that wide sphere beyond the domain of human law, and where 
a thousand influences of speech, affection, friendship, and exam- 
ple are always in full play, he may either spend life in aiming 
to subordinate them to himself, or else may surrender himself to 
be absorbed by them. 

18. Still profounder is the problem which asks for solution 
in the rehgious sphere ; where a sense of duty^ accompanied by 
unlimited sanctions, is to be made compatible with the presence 
and activity of other and inferior motives. How can the infinite 
coexist with the finite, and yet leave it free ? How can inferior 



864 MAN. 

excellence exist in tlie presence of infinite perfection, so as to 
make itself be felt ? Or how can the mind be left free to ap- 
preciate it ? The compelled, or necessary admiration of any 
excellence, besides being a thing inconceivable, would be alike 
unacceptable and useless. And yet the very conditions which 
leave the creature voluntary in this particular, expose him to 
the most alarming possibilities. His moral freedom requires 
that the period of the earth's origin should be hid in a dateless 
antiquity ; but from this circumstance he may take occasion to 
leap to the irrational conclusion that it is eternal, and un- 
created. Because, for the same reason, the successive creative 
stages of the ancient earth are not so obtrusively marked and 
palpable as to compel the judgment to a right conclusion, he 
may proceed to the length of denying the existence of an in- 
visible Agent. Although owing his primary origination to 
miracle — to an exercise of power unknown to the present 
course of nature — he may come to be so enamored of the uni- 
formities of nature as to deny the possibility of a miraculous 
change. From the fact that the few sequences in the chain of 
cause and effect which he sees are regular and stable, he may 
come unphilosophically to infer that all the rest of the chain is 
iron also, and even the Hand that holds it ; that because the lit- 
tle visible is fixed, no appeal can be responded to from the infi- 
nite Invisible. If man's free agency is not to be overborne by 
the visible display of immediate Divine operation ; if the evi- 
dence of Creative agency is to be enough to convince, but not 
so much as to overwhelm, the attainment of this balance will in- 
volve relations and adjustments of infinitely diversified compli- 
cation, and will form, in truth, the grand sphere for the exercise 
of creative wisdom and goodness ; and yet man may come to 
employ this very freedom in questioning the existence of the 
agency which alone makes it possible ! Without it, there could 
be no reasoning — no man ; with it, there may be, for him, no 
God. In other words, he may allow himself to be so beset by 
the present and the limited, as even to deny the existence of 
the Infinite Being. Or, admitting the existence of God, he 
may not recognize in Him the Creator and Governor of all 
things, denying his own accountability and dependence. Or, 
admitting the existence and providence of God, he may be so 
engrossed by the signs and exponents of excellence, as never 
to rise to the contemplation of the Divine Reality, nor even to 
inquire after Him. He may love every object but God ; and 
thus every action of his life, however consonant with natural 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 865 

law, may be performed without any reference whatever to the 
authority of the supreme Will, and to the excellence which 
should commend it. Or else, professing to admit the exist- 
ence, providence, and perfections of God, he may live for pur- 
poses which keep all these out of his sight, and which place 
him in constant collision with the Divine will. In these va- 
rious respects he may fail to subserve the great end of his ex- 
istence. 

19. From these remarks it will be seen not only that every 
part of the man is exposed, within its own sphere, to certain 
liabilities, but that his greatest danger consists in the power 
w hich he possesses, as a free being, of developing one part of 
his constitution into an ascendency over the rest, and of practi- 
cally detaching it from them. As an intellectual being, he may 
exaggerate the importance of the senses, regarding them as the 
sole sources of his knowledge, and may thus land in a system 
of Materialism. Or, concentrating his attention on the world 
of mind, he may be so dazzled by the light of reason as to look 
on the external world as nothing more than its reflection ; and 
thus adopt Idealism. Or, looking away from both the external 
and the internal, he may add imagination to reason, and soar on 
its wings to the great source of both, and lose himself in a sys- 
tem of all-absorbing Pantheism. Thus nature, man, or God, 
may become his idol, according as he surrenders himself chiefly 
to a particular faculty. Or, dissatisfied with the essential con- 
tradictions of these systems, and relying on the critical powers 
of the understanding alone, he may suri-ender himself to Scep- 
ticism. Or, wearied with efforts which have only brought him 
to the verge of a yawning gulf, he may add emotion to thought, 
and may watch the stirrings of his own bosom, till every move- 
ment there becomes an inspiration, and every whisper an ora- 
cle ; and thus he ends in Mysticism. 

20. Emotion may be developed and indulged without regard 
either to the thought that should precede, or to the activity 
which should follow it. In the former instance, approbation be- 
comes partiality; aversion, prejudice; and the mind beheves 
beyond the warrant of evidence. In the latter, it lives in an 
element of dramatic excitement, " with feelings all too delicate 
for use," and " sighs for wretchedness, but shuns the wretched." 
Sensibility may prompt man to weep over the friend whom his 
passions have led him to ruin. Taste, which is discriminating 
sensibiHty, may call for creations of artistic beauty, and engage 
him in its intense worship ; but so little has such refinement to 

31* 



366 MAN. 

do with morality, that, as the history of the Greeks shows, the 
intervals of the service may be given to the most odious vices 
of human nature. The same taste may be kindled to enthu- 
siasm by the contemplation of virtue — a feeling often mistaken 
for piety ; but it is the element of order, beauty, or sublimity, 
which is admired ; and so distinct is the object of this sesthetical 
emotion from the moral quality which conscience recognizes 
and approves, that man, while loud in the praises of the former, 
may be daily doing violence to the latter. 

21. As an active being, man's belief is designed to influence 
his conduct. But so separable are the two, that he may be 
indefinitely better or worse than his self-taught creed. If his 
passions predominate, they will impart to his speculations an 
epicurean cast; or, like Mahometanism, they may take the 
most ennobling and exalting faith — the doctrine of immortality 
itself — and mingle with it the poison of debasing sensuahty. 
If his self-love be nursed into selfishness, it will degenerate 
into the thousand forms of personal utilitarianism, and put a 
price on the virtues. His social affections, if disproportion- 
ately developed, sink the claims of the individual in a system 
of communism, and shut out from his view the Object of su- 
preme regard. His sense of duty, if cultivated by doing vio- 
lence to his appetites and affections, produces a stoic by sacri- 
ficing a man. 

22. According, then, to the erroneous views which men have 
entertained respecting the relation of the human will to the Di- 
vine, they may be generalized into two classes — those who en- 
deavor to escape from the liabilities of freedom, and those who 
affect to deny or to enlarge its limits. Perhaps we should say, 
according to their spirit rather than their" views, for the gene- 
ralization includes those who have never thought or reasoned 
on the subject, however decidedly they may have felt and act- 
ed. Even the views themselves may be regarded as the ex- 
pression of that spirit — as " the forms assumed by antagonist 
principles in human nature." If it be true, as it has been said, 
that every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, it 
is because of the prior truth, that every man has a practical 
preference either for liberty or necessity. This preference in- 
vades every region of thought, feeling, and action. Ascending 
to the loftiest pinnacle of thought, it finds Being itself distin- 
guishable into substance and cause — substance and its proper- 
ties, cause and its effects. And as the sacred historian tells us 
of the river that " went out of Eden to water the garden," that 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 367 

" from tlience it was parted, and became into four heads," so, 
from Edenic times, this river of thought has divided and flowed 
through the world, separating into schools and parties the 
population who have lived and even fought on its banks. Giv- 
ing the preference to Substance, as implying certain fixed and 
necessary properties, we arrive at a system of pantheism which 
denies freedom and personahty to God himself, and identifies 
Him with the universe : giving the preference to Cause, as self- 
determining, creative, contingent activity, we may regard matter 
ilself as consisting of forces and activities, and arrive at a system 
of polytheism. Reasoning from God to man, the advocate of 
Substance becomes an extreme necessarian, regarding his char- 
acter and destiny as fixed : the advocate of Cause becomes an 
extreme libertarian, regarding his conduct as exempt from Di- 
vine supervision. 

23. But apart from all speculative views on the great prob- 
lem, the spirit of the former is ever striving — bhndly and 
unconsciously it may be, as to its ultimate tendencies — to 
diminish the liabihties attendant on freedom, in every possible 
way. It seeks to escape the dangers of reasoning, by asking for 
a logic which shall infallibly conduct it to truth. On the same 
account, partly, " method (remarks Bacon), carrying a show of 
total and perfect knowledge, hath a tendency to generate acqui- 
escence." In religious practice, it aims to escape from danger, 
partly, by recasting the human constitution — by bodily infliction, 
celibacy, and the extinction of the social affections, and partly by 
recasting the world — immuring itself in monastic seclusion, and 
surrounding itself with a single class of objects, as if the evasion 
of trial were equivalent to the conquest of danger. While, in 
religious doctrine, it relies on the supposed infallibility either of 
an internal monitor, or of a church, or of a sacred volume whose 
inspiration is imagined to be such as to supersede the necessity 
of a painstaking discrimination, or anxious individual thought- 
fulness. On the other hand, the spirit of the latter is ever 
confounding liberty with lawlessness. It aims to enlarge the 
scope of freedom, by regarding difliculty as a dispensation from 
duty ; and mystery, from belief; and by removing Providence 
beyond the circle of human affairs. It supposes that it has suf- 
ficiently vindicated the dignity of man, by withholding its homage 
from every object loftier than man himself. Not less than the 
former spirit does it seek to remodel the world by artificial cre- 
ations of its own. While both agree, though in very different 



368 MAJi. 

respects, in evincing a degree of self-sufficiency at direct \im- 
ance with man's dependent position. 

24. Thus every part of man's nature, jointly and severally, is 
on probation. So, also, is every period of his life. The world 
of infancy is one entirely of sense: a little circle filled exclu- 
sively with tastes and scents, with sounds and colors, and forms, 
and motions. Even this first horizon of the human being fills 
and enlarges around it very gradually. Intellect, emotion, con- 
science, each as it comes into activity, finds its appropriate class 
of objects waiting to appeal to it, and to put it on trial. But as 
childhood rises into youth, and youth emerges into manhood, the 
human being may be said to inhabit a series of worlds, each in 
its turn preparing him for the next in succession. Each stage 
of life has its own facihty for forming habits. Each period re- 
quires its own amount of evidence to induce belief; but the man 
himself is always in the Divine balances while weighing evi- 
dence in his own. " Probability is the guide of life ;" but that 
which constitutes probability in youth, is held to be uncertainty 
in riper years, and, in each stage, furnishes a test of character. 

25. To the question, then. Why is man thus nicely poised 
between the too much and the too little ? w^e reply, Because he 
is made capable of maintaining his balance, and of augmenting 
his strength by the effort. It is a necessary condition of his 
freedom. His well-being requires it. He would be justified in 
complaining, were it otherwise. For how else is he to know 
either his powers, or their limits ? Mere information on the 
subject would not suffice. For this would leave all the emotional, 
voluntary, and moral part of his nature, waste and useless. Be- 
sides, the case supposes that the information is believed ; but the 
belief of a rational being must be based on evidence, and the 
examination of evidence, by involving an exercise of will and 
disposition, brings us back again to the idea of probation. Nei- 
ther would a higher position for man in the scale of creation 
meet the supposed difficulty. Let his powers of intuition be 
increased to any conceivable extent, they could not exceed the 
conditions of his nature ; in other words, they could not be 
unlimited, and against these larger limits the same supposed 
difficulty would still press. Besides which, natural endow- 
ments, being the gift of the Creator, are " neither the virtue 
nor the effect of the virtue of the being possessing them," and, 
consequently, they place him in no relation either to praise or 
blame. In order to this, he must employ them. As an agent 
capable of right action, he must act rightly. The moral powers 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 369 

with which he is invested become his onlj by use and appli- 
cation. 

26. The trial, then, to which every part of the human being 
is subjected, is itself the means of knowledge^, and may be the 
means of virtue. And how else is this knowledge to be acquired, 
unless by making men as gods, enabling them to understand 
without experience ? But this we have seen to be an impossible 
condition. Man can make nothing his own, except by experience. 
" It is a maxim of the schoolmen, that contrariorum eadem est 
scientia : we never really know what a thing is unless we are 
also able to give a sufficient account of its opposite." He that 
knows nothing in science has no doubts. The mind is made to 
know its own state in and by its acts alone. " Even as in geo- 
metrical reasoning, the mind knows its constructive faculty in 
the act of constructing, and contemplates the act in the product, 
so our actions are the means by which alone the will becomes 
assured of its own state ;" our efforts are the means by which we 
ascertain to ourselves both our powers and their Hmits. 

27. -All, therefore, that man, as an accountable being, can 
justly require is, not that he should be exempted from trial, for 
this Avould rob him of the means of self-improvement, but that 
his trials and his poM-ers should be adjusted to each other. 
Accordingly, he finds himself in a system in which the two are 
so balanced, that the matter which he has to employ is mixed, 
but separable ; the earth which he has to till, though barren, is 
cultivable ; the animals which he requires, though wild, are 
domesticable. The materials on which his art is to be occupied, 
though hard, are workable ; and though shapeless, formable. 
The objects around him, though confused and infinitely varied, 
admit of classification ; however beautiful, they are imitable ; 
however distant, measurable. The laws, on the constancy of 
which he has to rely, however recondite, are provable ; the tes- 
timony demanding his faith, however variable, is ascertainable ; 
and the true, though unseen, is inferable. The excellence of 
every kind to which he is called to aspire, however difficult, is 
attainable ; which is only saying that all the trials which lie in 
his way, however formidable, are vincible. In every step of the 
process, if successful, he is finding himself, making himself, im- 
proving himself; realizing the Divine design of what he should 
be. The comparative ease of the probation acquaints him with 
his powers ; its comparative difficulty makes him sensible of 
their limits. 

28. If the further question be put, Why are man's powers 



370 MAN. 

and their limits to be ascertained to him only as the results of 
experience ? the reply is, That he might be made aware of his 
moral freedom, and of his dependence, and so answer the 
ultimate end of his existence. The extent of his powers is the 
measure of his obHgation ; and the ascertainment of their limits 
is the discovery of his dependence. JMen do not like, indeed, 
to loolj at themselves as reflected from creation in this hght ; 
they would fain regard creation as a theatre for exhibition, 
or as a school for instruction, or as a temple, in which the 
symbols shall pass for realities, and fill them with pleasurable 
excitement. But the Infinite exists not for amusement. High 
and mighty purposes move Him in all that he does. One of 
His purposes in creating the universe, of which man forms a 
part, is that man should know Him as the Creator. This is a 
fact, the knowledge of which is surely as important for man 
as the knowledge of any other fact. But, regarded as the fact, 
the perception of which brings the Creator into man's horizon 
— which at once discovers to him his own power in being able 
to make the discovery, and tells him of its limits, inasmuch as 
it is a discovery of his dependence — the knowledge of it 
transcends in importance the knowledge of every other fact. 
And w^hen to this it is added, that there is a kind and degree 
of emotion appropriate to every perception of truth, and of 
action proper to every emotion, the Creator of man becomes 
his moral Governor, and man awakens to a consciousness of 
obligation. 

29. The value or virtue of such emotion and action, however, 
depends entirely on their being man's ow-n ; and this they can 
be only as he approves of them, and of whatever leads to 
them. All, therefore, that he can justly require is, that his 
obligation to God, as a voluntary being, shall not exceed his 
powers; and especially that he shall possess the means of 
knowing the limits of his power. The former is necessary to 
his self-development and well-being ; without it, he w^ould 
have no motive to think or to act. The latter is required by 
the Divine character, and due to it ; for how else is a man to 
recognize the dependent relation of the created universe ? 
Accordingly, he finds himself so constituted, and so surrounded 
by a larger constitution of things, that every exercise of power 
is calculated to tell him of its limits, and his consciousness of 
obligation for the right employment of that power, is accompa- 
nied by a sense of dependence on its Source. 

The evidence of the Divine all-sufficiency is so suppUed in 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 371 

creation, that in finding, and arranging, and appreciating it, 
man is developing his own resources. But such, also, is the 
balanced adjustment of the two, that every step of his progress 
discloses some new aspect of his dependence. If he reason a 
priori, he leaves an ultimate fact behind him ; if a posteriori, 
he finds a similar fact lying before him, and soon reaches it. 
However anxious he may be to complete his natural theology, 
he finds that he must be contented to receive it in small suc- 
cessive instalments — that the kingdom of truth, in all its depart- 
ments, like the kingdom of heaven, must be entered in the spirit 
of a little child. However much he may know, "what he knows 
is little, and worthless, in comparison with that which he be- 
lieves without knowing, and still less in comparison with that 
which he is ignorant of." While his liabilities are equal to the 
number of his powers — of all the combinations of which they 
admit — and of all the laws and facts about which they may be 
exercised. And thus the evidence of his own power — even the 
consciousness of his own freedom — is so checked and qualified 
by the unavoidable limits of the system in which it is exercised, 
that it is a perpetual memorial of his dependence. The volun- 
tary energy, of which he is conscious, becomes, when viewed in 
the light of the conditions which enclose it, the most solemn re- 
buke of his pride — a constant discipline of devout humiUty. 

30. The question, then, why the experience of which we are 
now speaking might not be dispensed with ? betrays either men- 
tal incapacity, or culpable ignorance of the subject. K man's 
freedom be a fact, so also is his dependence ; and the emotions 
and actions attendant on either become moral only in proportion 
as he recognizes them voluntarily. He who is insensible to his 
dependence, is not only blind to his real position in the universe, 
he is unacquainted with his responsible power ; for he is living 
in a circle which he has never explored to the circumference. 
But more, the very process by which he is made aware of his 
dependence, actually augments his power, besides rendering him 
more sensible than ever of the claims of Him, on whom he is 
dependent. The most precious effect of man's power is, that it 
enables him to ascertain the limit of his power ; to reach the 
boundary which joins the Infinite. At this point, his well-being, 
and the glory of the Creator, unite, and become one. Every 
act of obedience, which is a free assertion of power, disposes him 
to confess his dependence ; and every devout acknowledgment 
of dependence increases his power to obey. So that the highest 
means of self-improvement are inteUigent and practical homage 



372 MAN. 

of the all-sufficient God ; and the highest adoration is self- 
improvement, or a nearer approach to the Divine image. And 
every part of the Divine method points to this sublime con- 
clusion. 

31. It is just conceivable that the question may be inconside- 
rately asked, why, since every limitation of man's power exposes 
him to innumerable liabilities, a Being of infinite benevolence 
should have subjected him to any limits ? Limitation itself is 
not an evil ; it can become so only on the supposition either that 
man's probationary liabihties exceed his powers, or else that 
man voluntarily abuses his adequate power. The proper and 
sufficient reply, however, is, that the creation of a being without 
limits of some kind is simply inconceivable and impossible, 
creation itself being an act within limits. The only question, 
therefore, which remains relates to the particular limits assigned 
to human nature — why, when it was competent to the Divine 
Creator to constitute a being of a higher order, did he select the 
precise order which man actually exhibits ? If this question be 
asked in the spirit of complaint, it proceeds on the erroneous 
supposition that the higher order of power which it desiderates 
might have been bestowed without any corresponding increase 
of liability. Whereas, the balance between the two must still 
have been maintained ; freedom cannot be separated from its 
consequences ; so that a change of power, whether greater or 
less, would have involved a corresponding change of liability. 
Besides, the same question might continue to be asked at every 
supposed increase of human excellence. And if proposed re- 
specting man, why not, also, respecting every sentient existence, 
from the microscopic insect upwards ? Each might alike com- 
plain that it was not all — the sole recipient of all that infinite 
goodness was to impart. It is to be remembered, however, in 
respect to man, that, as a being capable of indefinite progi'ession, 
it matters little from what point of the scale of existence he com- 
mences his course ; inasmuch as he may be constantly approach- 
ing and overtaking every onward measure of perfection. While 
in proportion to the lowness of the point from which he started, 
will be the advantage attending his subsequent progress, for the 
excellence acquired will be his own in a sense which will pro- 
portionally increase his satisfaction, and reflect glory on the 
Being who gave him the necessary capabilities. But the ques- 
tion. Why man's actual constitution was assigned to him ? may 
be asked in the mere spirit of inquiry. In which case, looking 
at the vast and awful circle of mystery which surrounds us, as 



o 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 873 

a motive to humility, we state our conviction, the grounds of 
which will presently appear, that one of the innumerable rea- 
sons is, in order that man might subserve a plan of such diver- 
sified creations as shall demonstate the Divine all-sufficiency. 



Sect. II. — That part of the reason which relates to the Divine 
all-siifficienci/, and so includes mail's destiny. 

1. The sentence with which the last section concludes may 
possibly suggest to some minds the idea, that if, as we believe, 
the exhibition of the Divine all-sufficiency be the ultimate end 
of creation, the only adequate plan must be one which includes 
a graduated scale of being filling up the wide interval between 
the extremes of non-existence and the highest i-elative perfec- 
tion. For all-sufficiency, it might be said, must be sufficiency 
for so much as that, and can be proved only by it. But such a 
supposition overlooks two very important considerations: first, 
that the exhibition is to be made to a being capable of inferring 
beyond the extent of his evidence, of reasoning from the actual 
to the possible — of perceiving that his own mind is not the 
measure of the universe, and that the actual creation is not the 
measure of the Creative power — of concluding from the finite 
to the infinite. Now, for such a being, the physical demon- 
stration of the Divine all-sufficiency ,^ by literally calling into be- 
ing all possible orders of creations, would appear to be eminent- 
ly unsuitable, for it would compel his belief on the subject, and 
leave no room whatever for the voluntary exercise of his 
powers. Whereas, one of the highest ends of creation is his 
probationary self-development, which requires that his powers 
shall neither be superseded nor overborne, but be so condi- 
tioned as to be kept in harmonious and ever-strengthening ac- 
tivity. 

2. And, secondly, the supposition overlooks this progressive 
power, according to which, the same race of beings have- so 
much capability lodged in them from the first, that, without 
ever losing their identity, they can pass through successive 
stages of knowledge and holy excellence without intermission 
and without end. " Why (it might have been said at man's 
creation), wliy is he not gifted with organs of sense which shall 
supersede laborious analysis and slow experiment .'' Why, for 
example, are not his eyes microscopic ?'* Because he himself 
is capable of inventing a microscope, and of strengthening his 

32 



874 MAN. 

mental vision by the invention. " Why is not the earth itself 
nearer to our ideas of perfection ?" Because he himself is ca- 
pable of making it realize those ideas, and of perfecting his own 
nature by the process. Accordingly, the man of to-day is a 
very different being from the man of six thousand years ago, 
and the world he inhabits a very different world. The human 
constitution, indeed, is essentially the same, and the laws of Na- 
ture are unaltered ; but he is reading an advanced chapter of 
the great volume of Providence, and his nature responds to 
the change; while generation after generation has actually 
passed off into other worlds, and has there attained unknown 
stages of development, only to prepare for others equally un- 
known. Now, by this arrangement, the same race of beings 
may be regarded as rendering unnecessary the creation of as 
many separate races as are the stages through which it is des- 
tined to pass. 

3. But if the progress and identity of the individual from the 
beginning of his life to its close, presuppose the unchanged con- 
tinuance of the laws of his own constitution and of the world to 
which he belongs, so the progress and unity of the human race 
presuppose the immutability of everything characteristic in man 
and in Nature. The repeal of an original and essential law 
of either would render all the accumulated knowledge and ex- 
perience of the past inapplicable and useless. Practically, 
there would be no past. Such a change would be a commence- 
ment of everything de novo — a new revelation to a new race. 
The reason, then, both for the method of the Divine procedure, 
and for its continuance, gains strength with every successive 
age. Discoveries link on to each other. Great men, without 
designing it, find themselves standing in a series. The lamp 
passes onward from hand to hand. "The hour-glass of one 
man's life" loses its insignificance by mingling its sands with 
those of the life of the species. The great plan evolves from 
age to age. 

4. In proportion to the magnitude of this plan — to the num- 
ber of the elements which it includes, the multiplied complica- 
tions of which they are susceptible, and the high and diversified 
interests ultimately harmonized by the process, is the amount 
of the manifestation which it affords of the Divine perfection, 
and of the advantage which it places within the reach of man. 
Now, we have seen that in the instance of the individual man 
— of the first man — his liabilities were indefinitely increased 
with the addition of every organ, and member, and faculty; 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 375 

that they amounted to the number of all his powers, their pos- 
sible combinations, and the laws and objects on which they 
could operate. But how would our conceptions of this subject 
have been enlarged, could we have foreseen that even the natu- 
ral scenery and productions of the earth would, in a sense, be 
conveyed into the mind of man, and be taken up into his char- 
acter ; that every object and event in creation would, in a va- 
riety of ways, be wrought into the texture of man's moral his- 
tory ; and that every law expressed, and every truth symbo- 
lized, would sooner or later become a test of character? 
Separated into families, dwelling in distinct localities, and with 
distinct interests to maintain, his probationary field would have 
been seen still widening. National peculiarities would further 
complicate the great experiment. The variety of character and 
experience made possible by limiting human life, and by dis- 
tributing mankind into ages and generations, would have been 
justly deemed incalculable and inexhaustible. But a diversity 
of language and of religion ! — if we could have known that 
such a possibility would be realized, and have caught only a 
ghmpse of the new combinations of character and experience 
which such distinctions would make possible, we might well 
have felt overwhelmed at the magnitude of the process through 
which man might be destined to pass ; a process to be limited 
only, perhaps, by its falling into the stream of similar processes 
in other worlds, all at length flowing together into the same 
boundless ocean. 

5. Now, it the system to which man belongs be thus all-re- 
lated and progressive, it follows, that however vast and pro- 
longed it may be, no two human beings can ever stand in pre- 
cisely the same relation to it. Each, independently of his 
original difference of mind, occupies his own point of time and 
place, from which he reaches the external, and is reached by it, 
through media, peculiar, in some respects, to himself. As every 
man begins each period and each day of his own life under new 
circumstances, so each member of the race begins and prose- 
cutes life itself under circumstances distinguishable from those of 
every other. For the same reason, each separate community 
has a character of its own. Much as it may have in common 
with other communities, there are particulars in which its mor- 
al, like its natural scenery, is peculiar. The very fact that it 
has certain advantages and disadvantages, impUes that it has 
certain Habilities to evil, against which it has especially to guard, 
and certain talents entrusted to it, which it is under peculiar ob- 
ligation to cultivate. 



376 MAN. 

6. Every form of association and government has its dis- 
tinctive peculiarities. In one of tlie noblest passages of his 
writings, Bacon tells us, " That there is no composition of estate 
or society, nor order of quality or persons, which have not some 
point of contrariety towards true knowledge ; that monarchies 
incline wits to profits and pleasure, commonwealths to glory and 
vanity, universities to sophistries and affectation, cloisters to fa- 
bles and unprofitable subtlety, study at large to variety, and 
that it is hard to say whether mixture of contemplations with an 
active life, or retiring wholly to contemplations, do disable oi* 
hinder the mind more." 

7. In the stream of human generations, every age has its own 
portion of knowledge, its own facilities for action, its own prob- 
lems for solution, and its own appointed work. Every advance 
in civilization draws after it an increase of laws and relations, 
and each new relation multiplies the occasions of transgi'ession, 
even though the intensity of crime may be diminished. Every 
age has its own kind and amount of evidence of Truth. Reid 
speaks of an eminent mathematician, who " attempted to ascer- 
tain by calculation the ratio in which the evidence of facts 
must decrease in the course of time, and fixed the period when 
the evidence of the facts on which Christianity is founded shall 
become evanescent, and when, in consequence, no faith shall be 
found on the earth." Such an attempt shows, indeed, that every 
profession and department of knowledge, if followed exclusively, 
has a tendency to narrow the mind, and to incapacitate it for 
general activity. But however ridiculous the attempt to mea- 
sure moral evidence by a mathematical calcuhis, it is quite true 
that the evidence of Christianity chiefly relied on by the be- 
lievers of one age, differs from that chiefly relied on by those 
of another. The miraculous evidence has, in this respect (though 
still retaining an indestructible value and a fixed argumentative 
position), gradually and comparatively given place in popular 
use to the moral, the objective to the subjective. The Book 
speaks more for itself. 

8. Diversity of speech may be said to place and keep a peo- 
ple in a world of their own, insulated from the rest of the spe- 
cies. There is more than fancy in the idea " that Divine Provi- 
dence, in distributing to different human families this holy gift 
of speech, had a further purpose than the material dispersion 
of the human race, or the bestowing on them varied forms of 
utterance ; there was doubtless therein a deeper and more im- 
portant end — the sharing out among them of the intellectual 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 377 

powers."* In harmony with this conviction, Schlegel, regard- 
ing the loss of the Divine image as consisting in the separation 
of the elements of the human consciousness, views the Chinese, 
in the first period of the world, as representing the pure rea- 
son ; the Indians, the imagination ; the Egyptians, the under- 
standing ; and the Jews, the will : each in its unnatural and 
fatal isolation. Now, without at present expressing an opin- 
ion on such a classification, or proceeding with his application 
of the theory to the second and third periods of the world, 
it is clear that as each family of language's is distinctive, the 
mind of the people speaking it must partake of the distinction. 
The language of one portion of the race was especially adapted 
for stereotyping and retaining knowledge ; that of another, for 
enlarging and imparting it. One nation found itself using a 
speech of picture-words, descriptive of objects, and adapted for 
proverbs and poetry ; another was invited by the structure of 
its language to mark the relations of things, to lose itself in ab- 
struse distinctions, and to multiply schools of philosophy. 

9. Even the world of one period, were it revisitable, would 
be new and strange to the generations of a preceding era. The 
introduction even of a new esculent has changed the character 
of a people. A new amusement — that of the drama, for ex- 
ample — has come to give law to public opinion, and to mould 
the laws, and to affect the destiny of a state. Society is an or- 
ganization : and an organic change in the human body — the 
insertion of a new limb, or the addition of a new function — 
could hardly lead to a greater change or readjustment of all the 
pre-existing parts, than the appointment of a new office, or in- 
stitution, of any importance, does in relation to the framework 
of society. The introduction of a new truth has sometimes 
thrown all its elements into fermentation. A great principle, 
from the moment it comes to be recognized, never ceases to 
struggle for its right place and power in society. The discovery 
of the "new world" commenced the re-creation of the old. 
Tiie inventions and discoveries of science have gone on regu- 
larly enlarging the domains of thought, till man has carried his 
generalizations beyond the planets. The telescope has pushed 
back his material limits so as to make him the inhabitant of 
another universe ; and imagination, which once made a labor 
rious flight to Olympus, and regarded the mountain-bound hori- 
zon as the place of the departed, — the ne plus ultra of exist- 

* Dr. Wiseman's Lectures, v. i., p. 138. 
32* 



378 MAN. 

ence, — now finds no rest for the sole of its foot on this side 
the last-discovered planet. Man now consciously looks at ob- 
jects in light streaming from worlds which may have ceased to 
exist before the Adaraic creation commenced. 

10. Carrying our views into those distant regions, and on the 
supposition that they are " not created in vain — that [they are] 
made to be inhabited," * how highly probable is it that every 
intelligent race by which they are peopled (or are to be peopled, 
for the human race, may be one of the earliest) is advancing 
from different points of a vast circumference of being to the 
same centre as man. Each world, on this hypothesis, may 
stand in a relation to the ultimate history of the universe, sim- 
ilar to that which each man sustains to the moral history of the 
earth. After having each had its own particular starting-point, 
and its own unique course of discipline and experience, all 
worlds will be found contributing their distinct proofs of the 
all-sufficiency of Him who is " all in all." And even beyond 
this ; as in the history of our own globe, the events of one era 
(say of the animal creation) looked forwards to the coming of 
the human era for their ulterior reasons, so events taking place 
to-day in one part of the moral universe may look back to an 
origin anterior to the creation of man, and forwards to issues in 
worlds not yet called into being, and to points of duration not 
yet brought within the limits of human arithmetic. Thus era 
may link on to era, as well as world to world ; and yet each, 
" differing in glory " from the rest, may have this in common 
with them all — that its rays, however late in their arrival, shall 
finally blend with the central glory. Though even, like erratic 
humanity, its orbit may have its aphelia of distances fearful to 
imagine, it will finally have its perihelia also, and mingle its 
radiance with essential Light. 

11. But, as in the preceding section, we saw that each part 
of the human being, and each period of his life, is subjected to 
a probationary course, so here the same counterpoise of powers 
and trials may be looked for, on a yet larger scale. It is not 
enough that each number and each period of the great com- 
munity of men, or of worlds, has a character of its own ; that 
character supposes distinctive treatment — treatment correspond- 
ing to the kind of danger to which its connection with others 
may expose it, and to the end which the whole is destined to 
subserve. Now, it is evident that, if each man, for example, 

* Isaiah, xlv. 18. 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 379 

is to be a free moral agent, notwithstanding his intimate con- 
tact with others of his species, their power over him must be 
confined within certain hmits. On the other hand, it must be 
possible for that power to reach those limits, otherwise his con- 
nection with his race will be less real than his relation to the 
dust on which he treads. The well-being of the child is made 
to depend on parental influence. Why, then, it may be asked, 
is not that influence made irresistible ? Near as the parent 
may approach his child, there is a central inclosure into which 
he cannot obtrude. Much of his experience as he may impart, 
there is more which he withholds. Rather, he imparts only the 
results of his experience. Experience itself is incommunicable 
— the efiiorescence of a man's own personality. Between the 
individuality of the parent and the child there is a gulf fixed as 
real and as impassable as that which separates the solar system 
from the fixed stars. Each has his inviolable orbit. How else 
could the personal distinctness and identity of each moral agent 
be maintained — or the terrible fiction of the poet of the Inferno 
escape realization, in which the fiend and his victim commingle 
and become one, or that in which they exchange their respective 
natures ? The insulation and seclusion of the elements of ac- 
countability are as essential to the responsible freedom of each 
human being, as a community of nature is to the mutual de- 
pendence of the species. 

12. Each family is a world apart. It gravitates to other fam- 
ilies, indeed : has interests in common with them ; cannot exist 
without them. " Why, then, should they not all live in unre- 
stricted intercourse, and in sight of each other?" Because 
each is constituted to require a separate space for the free de- 
velopment of its own powers : whereas, the communism implied 
in the question would be only a new form of intolerable oppres- 
sion, in which one kind of knowledge would outrun reflection, 
and another kind forestall experience, and many things would 
be disclosed and felt which would prove fatal to moral liberty 
and progress. Hence, each family draws apart from the rest. 
And, as darkness curtains off each man from his fellows, and 
puts him on a probation distinct from that of the day, so the 
local separation of the family, and the seclusion of the tent or 
the house, place the family on a probation of its own. 

13. Why is the great collection of families distributed into 
nations, separated by mountains and oceans, and still more by 
diversity of speech ? Why, if they have common interests, is not 
the earth one vast plain, and all mankind ^encamped together in 



380 MAN. 

the centre ? Partly, hecause they have interests in common — 
a truth so momentous, that man is left to learn it, and to make it 
his own by experience. Because national separation is as ne- 
cessary to the progress of humanity, as division of labor is to 
the perfection of art ; and hence, while the unwieldy empires 
of the vast and unbroken continent of Asia remained compara- 
tively unchanged for ages, the indented coasts and insular lands 
of Europe were the scene of several distinct and successive 
civilizations ; and because, in the formation of its character, and 
the fulfilment of its distinctive office, each community may 
justly require that it shall be left to the free development of its 
powers and conditions. If the amount of stimulating influence 
from without fall below a certain point, the nation is in danger 
of becoming stationary, or even retrograde. If that point be 
exceeded, the equipoise of its powers is disturbed, and its free- 
dom is virtually lost. Laws can be appreciated only as they 
are seen or felt to be necessary. Institutions, abstractedly the 
best, may be practically the worst for the nation, until it has 
grown up to them. If it is to have principles of its own in 
harmony with eternal truth, it must have an experience of its 
own, in the heat and conflict of which they have had time to 
work themselves clear, and to consolidate. 

14. Why are not all the nations of the earth contemporane- 
ous, instead of being distributed into ages and generations ex- 
tending through thousands of years ? But this is a question 
which involves, not so much any modification of the existing 
constitution of things as the constitution itself — not so much 
the Divine method, as the Divine reasons for the method. It 
questions alike the reasonableness of individual progress from 
youth to age, and the progressiveness of the entire scheme of 
the Divine procedure. This is, ultimately, to question the rea- 
sonableness, and even the possibility, of a Divine manifestation. 
If, then, the great process through which humanity is to be con- 
ducted asks for diversified localities and a succession of ages, it 
follows that the greater that diversity, and the more numerous 
the links of that succession, the more varied the experience of 
the race will be, and consequently, the more conclusive and 
complete the grand result. That result, however, clearly re- 
quires that two extremes should be avoided. The experience 
of no one nation or age must so stand apart from that of all 
others as to be incompatible with the unity of the whole; 
neither must it be so produced by them, and identified with 
them, as to possess no characteristic of its own. The former 



REASON or THE METHOD. 381 

extreme — tliat of too great isolation — is guarded against by 
the arrangement which provides that, however diversified man's 
probationary localities, they shall all be on the same planet; 
and that, however many generations may intervene between the 
first and the last, they shall all be members of one family — 
partakers of a common nature. To provide against the latter 
extreme, each generation, though born apparently in the mould 
of the past, informs that mould with a new spirit, and thus im- 
perceptibly changes its shape. The very bonds which seemed 
to threaten its proper freedom, may only serve to provoke and 
hasten a Samson-like assertion of that freedom. New wants, 
and dangers unknown before, call forth powers equally new. 
Though the stadium is worn by the feet of former generations, 
each age resumes the race, runs for a new prize, and contends 
tor it in the presence of new witnesses. The individuality of 
each is preserved, combined with the unity of all. 

15. And can we suppose that we have reached the circum- 
ference of the Divine scheme, when we have found that the 
history of mere humanity is a whole ? If such were the little- 
ness of tite moral plan, the magnitude of the physical scheme 
would cast it into utter insignificance. The earth itself belongs 
to a planetary system. The recent discovery of a new planet 
has extended the limits of the solar system, two or three times 
beyond its furthest boundary as previously known. Yet, even 
there, every movement of the slow and solitary traveller in space 
confesses the presence and power of a mysterious reality which 
binds it to the sun, and to every material being within its 
mighty orbit. The motion of comets shows that the same 
gravitating power extends twenty times further than th^ orbit 
of that distant planet. Other planets, therefore, may be wan- 
dering remoter still. But could we reach the outermost con- 
fines of the system, and look across the vast gulfs which sepa- 
rate it from its nearest neighbors among the fixed stars, what 
should we recognize there but family and friendly features ? 
Radiant heat ; the all-pervading power of gravitation ; the pre- 
vailing character of the celestial groupings ; the probable traject 
of comets ; and light, with its uniform properties and equal 
velocity, conveying information from every region of space to 
every other — all combine in proclaiming a unity of plan and 
action in the mechanism of the universe. The countless as- 
semblage of worlds, though each with a voice of its own, con- 
fess to the same all-encompassing physical jurisdiction. 

Now, in whatever stage of the sublime consummation the 



3S2 MAN. 

universe maj at present be, can we suppose either that intel- 
lectual and moral existence shall ultimately fall far within the 
limits of the material ; or that, while the chorus of the spheres 
is the Unity of the Cosmos, the orders of the spiritual universe 
shall never be able to combine in the loftier strain of their own 
unity ? If continuity and oneness were wanting in either, surely 
it would not be in the spiritual creation. So essential does 
such unity appear to the proof of the Divine all-sufficiency, and 
so demonstrative of it, that the want of it would seem to obscure 
every other illustration that could be adduced in its behalf. 
But the absence of such all-pervading spiritual affinity is incon- 
ceivable. For, as the relation of the entire spiritual creation to 
the Creator must be supposed to be more intimate than that of 
the physical, because connatural with Him, so also may the 
relation of every part of the spiritual creation to every other 
part. If, then, (as we believe) the oneness of the plan which 
comprehends the material universe is only an intimation, a 
shadow, of the union which pervades all orders of spiritual 
being, why, it may be further inquired, should the visible crea- 
tion be broken up as it is into spheres and systems, and be scat- 
tered through immensit}^ ? Why, for example, should our earth 
float so far apart from the system to which it belongs ? Why 
should this system itself be separated by such vast intervals 
from the great astral group to which it belongs ? And this 
group — why does it lie off, an islet in the infinity of space ? 
Why do not all these wanderers in immensity aggregate and 
cohere, and form one immeasurable mass, on the wide surface; 
of which the interests of each order of intelligent beings shall 
be disclosed to every other, and become the interests of all ? 
Rather, why, instead of such a common fund of expeiience, 
should such diversity of orders exist, to make it possible ? for 
the continuity and sameness of the habitable universe very 
naturally .suggest a corresponding sameness in the nature of its 
inhabitants. Arid thus this course of questioning answers and 
dishonors itself; for it ends virtually in the inquiry why the 
universe, material and spiritual, is not less varied, and less 
ample than it is, and therefore, less worthy of the Divine per- 
fections. 

16. Now, as to the proximate reason for the impassable gulfs 
which separate the heavenly bodies, it is doubtless a physical 
ordination for the stability of the whole mechanism. 

But, regarding the material creation, as 'subservient to the 
spiritual, a^ moral reason for the arrangement presents itself to 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 383 

the mind, of the highest significance. Man's freedom of action 
requires the seclusion which is thus secured; and, doubtless, 
he needs it only in common with other voluntary natures. Let 
it be supposed that the conditions implied in the preceding ques- 
tions were complied with ; that the material masses, emerging 
from depths which no space-penetrating power has yet explored, 
should approach and cohere ; and that all the hosts of intelli- 
gences, in their distinct communities, and in their different 
stages of progress, should come from their strange and distant 
domains, to concentrate and to act within sight of man, who 
does not feel that, from that moment, his own voluntary agency 
would pause ! How easy to picture him paralyzed by the ter-' 
rors of the scene, or absorbed by its novelty, or stimulated by 
its grandeurs, to frenzied activity. The equilibrium of his pow- 
ers would be gone. In order to its recovery, therefore, the dis- 
tracting vision must be dismissed. Those unknown orders must 
cease to press in upon him. He is not made to act in their 
presence. He must " know only in part." If his probationary 
freedom is to be resumed, the vast material continent must be 
broken up, and each island world float back to its remote orbit. 
There, the doings of each order, hidden from the far-reaching 
gaze of his eye, aided by all the resources of art, must be left 
to his imagination alone. And thus is it wisely ordered, ac- 
cording to the existing arrangement, that although the material 
system is detached and secluded from the group, and the planet 
from the system, age from age, and the nation from the world, 
the family from the nation, and the individual from the family, 
each can stand in the midst of these concentric circles with in- 
fluences streaming in upon him from every part and point of the 
vast circumference, yet be really and consciously free. With lines 
of convergence reaching him from every part of the surround- 
ing universe, he presents the spectacle of a being universally 
related, yet individually free. 

17. And then, in the infinite complication of adjustments 
necessary to attain this end, for every being of every other 
order, as well as for man, we are pointed to the ultimate reason 
of the whole — the manifestation of Divine Perfection. The 
bare fact that each human probationer occupies a post of obser- 
vation differing in some respects from that of every other mem- 
ber of his own race, reminds us that every order of intelligence 
has its own experience, and each individual of each order his 
own character. A mere glance in this direction overwhelms the 
mind. The conditions necessary for such an administration are 



884 MAN. 

inconceivable. The Being who can harmonize such dependence 
with such freedom, and such variety with unity, must be all- 
sufficient ! We have just been speaking of gravitation as an 
all-pervading principle. Possibly it is almost the only physical 
law which our planet may have in common with some other of 
the distant parts of the material universe. The law is here so 
overlaid by corpuscular forces, so concealed by the distracting 
influences of other phenomena, that it is necessary to look away 
from the surface of the planet, and to contemplate the celestial 
movements, in order to recognize the sublime and mysterious 
reality. Very different may be the local forces, and tlie intricate 
play of the forces, which constitute the life of other globes. 
For these distinctive phenomena, each world must have cal- 
culations and tables of its own. But all, on turning from the 
individual details of their respective worlds, and looking out at 
the free movements of these worlds in space, may perceive, as 
man does, that they are surveying the empire of a universal law. 
Here, losing sight of the variety arising from the qualitativi^ 
heterogeneousness of matter, a variety which distinguishes each 
world from all, they are invited to survey the disengaged and 
unimpeded operations of a law which unites them ail into ono 
grand whole. 

18. Now, is it not more than probable that the material is in 
this respect a shadow of the spiritual ? We cannot suppose that 
the moral history of our own race is the exact repetition of that 
of any other race. We have ground to believe, rather, that in 
all its details, at least, it is specific ; that the history which may 
most nearly resemble it, is yet characteristically different. And 
this difference may be, not the measure, indeed, but a sample of 
the variety which distinguishes each from every other. What, 
then, is the great uniting principle of which these varieties are 
only the particular modifications ? Could we make the tour of 
the intelligent universe, can we conceive of our finding any race 
where the obhgation of supreme love to supreme excellence is 
not binding? Probably there is no world in which its operation 
appears in precisely the same results. But looking away from 
each specific variety arising from the varied media through 
which it operates, we should find no order of beings whose 
world might not be heard, Sinai-like, uttering, in its own pecu- 
liar manner, the one law — " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart." This is the all-pervading law essential to 
the stability and well-being of the spiritual universe. And then, 
as the law of gravitation, after taking us to a height from which 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 385 

all the material creation is seen generalized into a single fact, 
leaves us standing in the felt presence of the Lawgiver, so the 
law which unites all the spiritual creation into one moral govern- 
ment, leaves us consciously in the awful presence of the infinite 
Governor. And if, in that presence, we try to conceive what He 
must be whose eye surveys at once both the united whole, and 
the infinite variety of the parts, we can only seek relief in the 
admission that He is God all-sufficient. 

19. Indefinitely greater are the views of the Divine resources 
suggested by the reflection that the unity of the creation is of a 
kind to be perfectly compatible with the fact, that it is ever re- 
ceiving accessions, making advances, entering into new internal 
relations, always Becoming. As a new generation is, at this 
moment, gradually and silently mingling with the stream of the 
world's population, so may new orders of accountable beings be 
imperceptibly taking their reserved and appointed places in the 
great community of mind. As every human being retains his 
individuality, notwithstanding his community of nature and con- 
dition with his species, and even though his individuality varies 
from hour to hour, so, in the great family of worlds, no two or- 
ders of being probably exist in precisely the same stage of prO" 
gress, or sustain exactly the same relations to the inomense whole. 
It has been adduced as a striking illustration of the Divine fore- 
sight, that the season of the birth of the young of certain animals 
should be adjusted to the season of the year, and to the period 
of the food most conducive to its well-being ; the preparation for 
the birth of the animal, and the preparation for the birth of its 
food, (say the larvge of insects,) dating from very different points 
of time. What, then, shall we say of the plan which provides 
for the accountable freedom of successive generations of human 
beings, and which provides for it, partly, by occupying them for 
ages in discovering and applying the material provisions which 
had been slowly laying up for them uncountable ages before the 
first of their race was called into being ! And what shall we say, 
further, of the plan which provides that such a world, freighted 
with the responsible and immortal interests of unknown myriads, 
should silently take its place, and hold on its course, amidst a 
Yast family of worlds, in which each differs from all, and is yet 
in perfect harmony with the well-being of all ; and which, as 
they have emerged from the unfathomable depths of the past, 
are all moving on to an endless future, along every point of which 
they are waited for by similar interests, to advance together to- 

33 



d86 MAN. 

wards ever augmenting issues ! The bare imagination of such 
a plan is suggestive of a Being of infinite resources. 

20. A probable limit to this view of the indefinite variety of 
worlds and systems possibly included, at any one time, under the 
Divine administration, we referred to at the commencement of 
tliis section — namely, that the same race of beings by passing 
through successive stages of experience, might render unneces- 
sary the creation of as many separate orders as the stages they 
pass through. And this arrangement, though limiting the varety 
of the orders of beings created, would obviously enlarge our con- 
ceptions of the Divine resources by furnishing a severer test of 
all-sufficiency ; just as a single mechanism, capable of a thousand 
diversified applications, would be justly regarded as a production 
incomparably more astonishing than that of a thousand machines 
each susceptible of only one such application. 

In the history of man, such an arrangement exists. But who 
could undertake to specify the conditions involved even in rela- 
tion to this single race, without feeling his presumption rebuked 
at the first step ? Even if man had perished in his first sin, his 
brief existence here would have involved provisions too compli- 
cated for any created mind to expound. But his continuance 
here in successive generations adds indefinite complication to 
those conditions at every step. Not only does his life depend 
on the nice adjustment of his constitution to the size, the density, 
the path of the earth — each of which, as it is one only out of 
millions of possible combinations, is evidently the result of de- 
sign — -his science, the gradual education of his intellect, involves 
dependences indefinitely more profound and delicate still. Not 
only does his physical well-being depend on a certain number of 
materials being laid up in the earth for his use ; his progress in 
the arts, and his moral welfare, require that they shall be laid 
up in a certain manner, be discovered and applied with certain 
difficulty,- admit of certain combinations, at certain stages of civ- 
ilized development, and be limited in their moral influences 
within certain calculable bounds. Not only (if mind is to tri- 
umph over matter) must the planet, in all its laws and properties, 
be relative to the powers of the human being, it must be relative, 
also, to the tract of time allotted for the continuance of the race 
upon it, and to the opportunities man may have, during that time, 
for understanding and subduing it. Let us not wonder (says 
Seneca,* in a lofty strain) that what is so deep is brought 

* Quaest. Nat., vii., 25, 30, 31. 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 387 

out SO slowly. It is not yet fifteen hundred years since Greece 
reckoned the stars, and gave them names. These things can be 
explained only by a long succession of inquiries. We have but 
just begun to mark some of them. " The members of future 
generations (lie remarks) will know many of which we are igno- 
rant. Many things are reserved for ages to come, when our 
memory shall have passed away. The world would be a small 
thing, indeed, if it did not contain matter of inquiry foi' all the 
world. Eleusis reserves something for the second visit of her 
worshipper. So, too, Nature does not all at once disclose all Her 
mysteries. We think ourselves initiated ; we are but in the 
vestibule. The arcana are not thrown open without distinction, 
and without reserve. This age will see some things ; that which 
comes after us, others." 

21. Not only may man's wants vary and increase as he advances 
through time, some of these may be of a nature to require that 
Divine provision should not be made for them, or, at least, 
should not be made known, till they actually arise, and are felt. 
Such is one of the conditions of any revelation from God to man. 
Though given, in parts, to individuals, it must be adapted as a 
whole to the species. Though given progressively, it must, 
when completed, be adapted to a race still in progress, and be 
calculated to promote it. In meeting the difficulties of one age, 
it must not supersede the dihgence of another, but inspire and 
reward it. Though present to guide the first step of the first 
human being, it must await each succeeding generation on a 
higher level, and at a new starting point, and yet be found 
present with the last, pointing to unattained heights of knowledge 
and excellence. Though adapted to universal man, it must be 
so specific as to individuahze and address every human being 
of every age and every state of society. Who does not see that 
if the Divine administration is to be unfolded, on the one hand, 
and if man's moral freedom is to be held sacred, on the other, 
the fulfilment of these conditions demands the resources of an 
Infinite Mind? Man's highest wisdom consists in sounding these 
"depths of wisdom and knowledge ;" though his fine after all 
touches only here and there, where they rise, reef-like, near the 
surface of his course. His highest virtue consists in clearly 
perceiving all the objections properly and necessarily belonging 
to a plan constructed for his probation, and yet surrendering 
himself to the balance in favor of its celestial claims. 

22. The compounded constitution of man made possible from 
the first an indefinite diversity of natural and virtuous character. 



388 MAN. 

But the disturbance and derangement of that constitution by sin, 
increased that possible diversity beyond all conception. The 
greater the possible perfection of the human being, and the 
more complicated his nature, the greater the multitude of his pos- 
sible aberrations. And the longer his race is continued, the more 
extended his opportunity of further multiplying these aberra- 
tions, and of aggravating the original evil. If an error of eight 
minutes in the calculations of the Ptolemaic hypothesis, involved 
Astronomy in a cloud of errors which called, according to Kep- 
ler,* for an entire reform of the science : if "a trivial slip in the 
elementary precepts of a Logical theory, becomes the cause of 
mightiest errors in that theory itself :"t if, as in the ethical sys- 
tems of Zeno and Epicurus, partial ti-uth may be practically 
equivalent to absolute falsehood, who can preconceive the variety 
and amount of evil possibly resulting from the taint and derange- 
ment of the nature of the astronomer, the logician, the moralist, 
himself? For sin is the error of the Ptolemaic system of the 
universe repeated in the spiritual universe. It is a false premiss, 
a fundamental error in the logic of man's moral nature. It is a 
j)arent fault more generative than the nature which it infests, 
and capable of unlimited reproduction. 

23. The possible diversity of which we speak may be en- 
larged yet further by the perversion of every Divine remedial 
interposition. Whether that intervention consist of a law im- 
posed, a truth revealed, a gift bestowed, or a deed performed, 
its heavenly origin implies its excellence, and its relation to a 
free agent implies its pervertibleness. But as the possible 
caricatures of a perfect model are innumerable ; so the erroneous 
combinations of a single truth, and the modes of violating a single 
law, are endless. Sin is a virtual attempt to break away from 
all law, and to revel in a field which has no assignable limits. 
The very element of mercy itself, therefore, may be perverted 
into the means of aggravating and multiplying evils which it 
was calculated to remedy. Like the addition of an unit, in a 
vast reckoning, it may change the relation of every figure pre- 
viously set down, and increase the total amount a million-fold. 

24. What, then, if man's well-being — his consciousness of 
dependence — should require that he be allowed to exhaust all 
these possible diversities of evil on his way to good ? As sin 
is a voluntary departure from perfection, man may be inclined 
to try and to tax eveiy means of self-sufficiency, rather than 

* De Stell. Mart, P. 11, c. 19. t Galen De Temperamentis, 1. i., c. 5. 



r^ 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 389 

recognize tlie fact of his dependence on God. What if the 
lime should come when it may be said — " hardly any experi- 
ment can be imagined which has not already been tried by man ; 
displaying in the infinite varieties of human genius and pursuits, 
the astonishingly diversified effects resulting from the possible 
combinations of those elementary faculties and principles, of 
Avhich every man is conscious in himself? Savage society, and 
all the different modes of civilization ; the different callings and 
professions of individuals, whether liberal or mechanical ; the 
prodigies effected by human art in all the objects around us ; 
laws, government, commerce, rehgion ; but above all, the records 
of thought, preserved in those volumes which fill our libraries, 
what are they,"* if traced either to their origin, or to their 
general application, but experiments on the extent of man's 
independent resources ? parts of a persevering process by which 
man is too commonly laboring to conceal from himself his true 
relations to God ? What if the time should come when all the 
fallacies of which human reasoning is susceptible shall be known 
to man, from his having actually employed them in his pursuit 
of knowledge ; and when the record and classification of them 
shall come to form an essential part — as a memorial and a 
warning — • of every treatise on logic ? when false methods of 
interpreting nature and attaining truth shall have been perse- 
vered in so long, that, not he who makes a discovery, but he 
who points attention to the right method of discovery, shall be 
considered the greater man ? When one shall be able to show, 
for example, that all the possible forms of fatalism have been 
actually broached and maintained ? and another, that all the 
false hypotheses of the universe have had their day ?t and a 
third, that of the four great systems of philosophy possible to 
the human mind — Sensualism, Idealism, Scepticism, and Mys- 
ticism — there is not one which has not been adopted and 
repeated ; % slowl}^ traversing the globe and successively assum- 
ing the particular characteristics of the different branches and 
eras of the human family ? and when even eclecticism itself 
shall be only reproduction ! 

25. Here, again, however, we must demur to the idea that 
man is necessitated to exhaust all the forms of error prior to his 



* Slightly altered from tYiQ Prel. Diss, to the Ency. Brit., xlv., xlvi. 
t Cudworth's Intellectual System, cc., i., ii., iii. 
X M. Cousin's Histoire de la Philos., au 18me Siecle, (Cours de Philo- 
eophie.) 

38* 



390 MAN. 

attainment of truth, or that it is his destiny to try all the possi- 
bilities of evil on his way to good. Such a view might suit a 
system of Fatalism ; but the Divine Government of free agents 
rejects it. Accordingly, as we just now suggested a limit to the 
view of the existence of all possible worlds, so here we are 
reminded of a limit to the view that this world is to be conducted 
through all possible stages of experience. Man is to be reclaimed 
to a sense of his dependence in a manner accordant with his 
responsible freedom. This agrees with the first of the two 
limiting considerations with which this section opens. While 
his proneness to lose sight of his dependence, on the one hand, 
may require that he should, to a certain degree, be left to him- 
self, that certain means and influences should be withheld from 
him which might seem to be the only things necessary, in order 
to bring him into a right course, and that he should be left to 
experiment on an indefinite variety of his own devices, his free 
agency on the other, requires that the demonstration should not 
be such as to compel him to certain conclusions, and to leave no 
scope for his voluntary powers. If, as a dependent being, ho 
must be left without excuse for aiming at independence, so, also, 
as a free being, he must not have to complain that no option is 
left him to avow his dependence. His homage to the right 
object, if it is to be virtuous and acceptable, always supposes 
that there are wrong objects yet untried, and inviting his trust. 
26. If, in an argument for the Divine all-sutficiency, the 
power of conducting the same race through several successive 
stages of experience be more than equivalent to the creation of 
as many distinct races, so the power of Hmiting the experience 
of that one race in such a way as to balance the conditions of 
its freedom and of its dependence at every step, implies greater 
resources than the absence of such a limit would indicate. It is 
the nice adjustment of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces 
brought into the domain of moral government. The projectile 
force of freedom harmonized with the gravitating law of depend- 
ence, varying with each order of beings, yet adjusted to the 
grand community of orders. And, as each planet rotates on its 
own axis, requiring the further adjustment, that the velocity of 
its rotation should be such as to be controlled by the gravitation 
arising from its mass, so each member of the human race exem- 
plifies the constant interaction of opposing forces in his own 
particular experience. The complicated interdependence of the 
entire moral universe may thus be said to be condensed and 
repeated in each man's life, but repeated in each "with a 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 391 

difference" the very difference suggesting that the Being capable 
of originating and conducting such a system, could, if he saw fit, 
make each man the type of a distinct race, and conduct that race 
through ages and stages of experience differing from that of 
every other. 

27. What must that perfection be which seeth the end of the 
great process from the beginning, which is never baffled, never 
has to retrace its steps, never to perform an isolated act ; which 
employs the same means for the attainment of an unknown 
variety of ends, and directs innumerable agencies to the same 
end ; which in a vast family of transgressors springing from the 
same parentage, leaves each member in the possession of indi- 
viduality and freedom ; which can wait for any period, while 
man is wearying himself out in acts of hostility, and can then 
take occasion from that hostility to make a new display of good- 
ness and grace ; which can make its richest exhibitions of mercy 
the occasion for proclaiming its everlasting foundations of truth 
and equity ; which, while providing for the race, adapts its pro- 
visions and its discipline to the case of each individual ; which, 
amidst the whirl and play of the universal scheme, assigns to 
every man a distinct orbit of his owm, and which makes his 
every movement a part of the connected history of the universe, 
and of eternity ? 

28. " Such knowledge is too wonderful for us !" While in 
its probationary state, each race probably has to confine itself 
chiefly to its own special history, and each individual chiefly to 
his own particular responsibilities. The god-like employment 
of marking hov/ each separate part falls in with the general 
plan, and contributes to form a sublime whole, is reserved for 
the era of results, the distant future. Why, then, have we ad- 
verted to that infinite variety in ultimate unity ? For the same 
reason that the Divine Being himself has been pleased to afford 
us a few suggestive hints respecting it — to remind us that 
creatures who are in possession of hints and conjectures only 
are not yet in a position to foretel results, and to pronounce 
final judgments. How necessary it is that man should confine 
himself, for the present, to particulars, if only for the purpose 
of preparing himself for the final generalization ! How 
Immbling (if he be proud) to find that at present he is not only 
secluded in a small, dim cell, but that he actually needs the 
seclusion ; that he could not be taken out to look at the 
Divine plan, without being incapacitated by the vision ! How 
instructive (if he be humble) to find that he belongs to a race 



392 MAN. 

of beings prone to pronounce as confidently on the farthest 
results of the great plan, as if they lived at its centre, and saw 
all round to the circumference, as if all the data of the universe 
were before them, though they have yet to know even them- 
selves ! 



Sect. m. — The twofold reason of the method in its application 
to the first man, 

1. We have been referring to the inexplorable conditions of 
that scheme which, while it maintains every part of the human 
family in complicated relationship to every other part, and 
world to world, and the remotest past to all the future, harmo- 
nizes, with the utmost accuracy, in the case of every individual, 
and through every moment of time, the claims of his freedom 
with the fact of his dependence. We have now to carry our 
thoughts back to the moment when the first of our race silently 
took his place in this all-related system, and was formally ap- 
prised that his probation had commenced. And, with the les- 
sons of modesty derivable from the preceding section, we have 
to approach the first great practical event in man's history — 
his guilty fall. 

2. In order, at once, to disarm prejudice, as far as is consist- 
ent with fidelity to truth, we may be permitted to premise, first, 
that the existence of sin is assumed. Even the rejector of reve- 
lation will surely allow that " there is something else than good- 
ness in the world ;" that every virtue finds its antithesis here ; 
that every man believes that every other man might be some- 
what better than he is ; that moral evil ranks as truly among 
the realities of the earth as poisons, storms, and volcanic fires. 
Secondly, that man's sinful condition is not his normal and 
original state ; that disorder could not have been a law of his 
primary condition ; that in no sense can God be regarded as 
the author of sin ; that its origin commenced after man became 
a free agent. Thirdly, that unless the existence of sin itself 
could be disproved, the rejection of the Biblical account of its 
introduction would avail nothing. Even if that account had 
never been supplied, or were it to be now entirely set aside, the 
presence of sin would still remain the same dreadful reality as 
ever. We ai-e not sinners because the Bible affirms the fact ; 
the Bible affirms it because we are sinners. It is a prior and 
independent fact of our consciousness. And fourthly, that to 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 393 

reject the scriptural representation of the origin of human sin- 
fuhiess — a subject on which inspiration alone is competent to 
speak, and on which no other report worthy of serious attention 
has ever been ventured — is irrational and suspicious ; espe- 
cially, too, if it can be shown that all the leading accompani- 
ments of the events, as scripturally related, are strictly conge- 
nial with whatever we know of human nature, and of moral 
government. This accordance it will be our duty to demon- 
strate. And our conviction is, that, as a subject for devout ad- 
miration, next to the mercy which caught man in his guilty 
fall, and provided the means of his recovery, is the holy benevo- 
lence which placed man on the height from which he fell — 
within one easy step of endless life. 

3. Before proceeding to expound the reasons of the probationary 
law in its harmony with man's nature and destiny, let us glance 
at the condition in which it found him, as implied in the law it- 
self. Whatever the nature of the primal law might have been, 
and whatever the result of its enactment, it would surely have 
been a subject of profound retrospective interest to every mem- 
ber of the race of man. If a nation, which, in the lapse of ages, 
has acquired historical distinction, looks back with interest to its 
first rude efforts at legislation, and discovers with delight the 
earliest records or intimations of its laws, how much more in- 
teresting should it be for every descendant of Adam to look 
back on the first law given verbally by the Divine Legislator 
to the father of the race ! To know the statute by the enact- 
ment of which the Creator first announced the responsibility of 
his creature, and by which moral government formally com- 
menced on earth, is surely a subject to absorb, for a time, the 
most incurious mind. Law — even human law — is now 
everywhere. As domestic, or social, or national, or internation- 
al, it is everywhere — in private, in the family, in public life, on 
the land, on the sea, by night and by day ; while the law of 
God, ubiquitous like Himself, is felt to be present with the 
movements of the mind within, and to surround us like an at- 
mosphere from which there is no escape ; surely it must inter- 
est every man to know how positive* law began, or what was 
the form which it first assumed. Now, Divine revelation in- 

* Positive law as distinguishable from moral law ; the latter being of 
immediate obligation, the former only of mediate obligation ; binding, that 
is, not owing to anything right in itself, but on account of its depend- 
ence in something which is right in itselif — obedience to the will of Grod. 



394 MAN. 

forms us. Taking us back to the earliest moments of man's 
existence, it sliows us the Creator in the act, so to speak, of 
binding the creature to Himself by the first-made verbal law. 
" And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree 
of the garden eating thou mayst eat ; but of the tree of the 
knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the 
day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die." 

4. On considering the nature of this command, we think we 
may confidently affirm, that had it remained inviolate, no one 
would ever have thought of impeaching its rectitude or pro- 
priety ; but that all would have joined in admiring its simplicity, 
easiness, and adaptation, and in adoring the sovereign goodness 
of the Lawgiver. Or, even, when violated, had the attendant 
penalty been a mere momentary infliction on the transgressor, 
each of all his posterity w^ould doubtless have acquiesced in the 
Divine arrangement. The quarrel is, then, not with the nature 
of the law, but with the supposed consequences of its violation. 
Its character is left unconsidered, and all that is thought of is its 
issue. Or, if its character be glanced at, it is only to impugn 
it on account of its issue. And thus, indulging in the very 
spirit which led to the transgression of the law, men judge of 
its character by its results. The first transgi-essors acted on 
the persuasion that, judging by the fallacious advantage of its 
violation, it would be better to break it than to keep it ; their 
posterity are apt to think that it would have been better had it 
not been enacted; — both uniting in the implied sentiment, that 
man's will, and not God's, should rule. The first law appears 
to be as good a test, still, of man's moral disposition, as it was 
on the day of its Divine appointment. 

5. In our sketch of man's primeval condition, in a previous 
chapter,* we saw that his first exercises were those of a man, 
and not of a child ; that his powers, physical, mental, and 
moral, were capable of adult activity, and, as such, responded 
to their appropriate objects. We saw, also, that the theology of 
unfallen man, as implied especially in the primal law, was — a 
powerful, wise, and beneficent Creator ; that Creator his equit- 
able moral Governor ; and immortal life or gain in prospect as 
the reward of his obedience ; and a threatened death or loss as 
the deserved penalty of disobedience. We have now to consider 
man's condition as a being placed by that law on probation. 
And first, the law implied, as it issued from the mouth of God, 

* Supra, p. 179, etc. 



o 



REASON OF THE METHOD. "395 

that, at that moment, man's constitution was in harmony with 
itself — the lower powers being subordinated to the higher, 
— and that he was enabled and required so to maintain it ; but 
that if he willed the subversion of this internal harmony, a state 
of derangement and evil would, not arbitrarily, but naturally, 
ensue. We know, indeed, from familiar experience, that we 
cannot will anything leading to such derangement, even iffno- 
rantly, without incurring the evil effects. Nor do we see why, 
in equity, the first man might not, as far as his own personal 
responsibility alone was concerned, have been left to the same 
liability. But let it be remarked, that from all such danger 
(one point excepted) the prohibition implies that he was spe- 
cially protected. From that solitary point, nothing was with- 
drawn, we believe, in the hour of trial ; but man simply remain- 
ed without any special protection at that pomt, as he might have 
been left in every other particular. 

6. It implied, again, that the whole of man's subjective na- 
ture was in harmonious relationship to the whole objective uni- 
verse, including God himself; and that man was enabled and 
required to maintain himself in this position ; but that if, know- 
ing this to be the will of God, he yet willed to do anything con- 
traiy (though it should be only the performance of a physical 
act, such as eating and drinking) then, besides the internal evil 
flowing naturally from the act, he will become conscious of guilt 
in having violated his relations to God. 

We have said " if he willed to do any thing contrary ;" but 
that which demands peculiar attention is, that there was only 
one thing contrary to the will of God which the first man was 
left in danger of doing. The law implies that every avenue of 
evil was, for him, closed up, one excepted. For surely it was 
not to be understood that he might violate every other obliga- 
tion, natural and moral, with impunity. Neither could it have 
meant that, if left to himself, there was no other liability to 
which he was exposed than the one specified. As a free agent, 
his liabilities would, apart from a special provision to the con^ 
trary, be co-extensive with his multiplied obligations. His na- 
ture is a living law-table. How is it, then, that his attention is 
drawn off from every other point of duty, as a point of danger, 
to be concentrated exclusively on this solitary liability ? How 
is it that his well-being, involving as it does the discharge of 
numerous and diversified obligations, should be suspended on 
this one point ? We can account for the fact only by conclud- 
ing that, by a special provision, the first man was preserved, in 



396 MAN. 

a manner consistent with his moral freedom, from violating any 
duty excepting that of the prohibitory law. 

Here, again, we believe that, viewing the first man in his 
personal as distinguished from a representative capacity, he 
might have been left equitably without any such special pro- 
vison. He was a free agent, capable of self-government, and 
held responsible for a life of obedience. Nor was the Divine 
Being under any obligation to put it out of his power to violate 
any one of the diversified duties binding on him. And yet the 
probationary law implies that such an arrangement actually 
existed ; that, by a Divine influence, or sovereign appointment, 
of some kind, man's thousand liabihties were reduced to one. 
He was rendered invulnerable, excepting at one point. Look- 
ing abroad over the wide field of duty, he might already fore- 
taste the security of heaven, save in one spot. This was moral 
liability reduced to its minimum. 

7. And the law implied further, that man, continuing in his 
present state of inward and outward conformity to the Divine 
will, should continue to enjoy the ever-enlarging results, in the 
growing excellence of his character, and the corresponding im- 
provement of his outward condition, or the corresponding man- 
ifestations of the Divine favor ; but that, voluntarily failing in 
obedience to the one probationary law, he would experience a 
change of condition answering to his change of character and 
relations — he would, in some sense, die. And it implied, 
moreover, that, as the head and representative of his race, 
the consequence of his obedience would be the perpetuation 
of life, such as he enjoyed, to his posterity ; while his failure 
would incur the forfeiture of that Hfe for them, as well as for 
himself. 

And here, again, we behold an arrangement immeasurably 
exceeding all that equity could have required, and calculated to 
astonish by its goodness. Man, we have seen, had come into a 
pre-existing constitution, in which physical evil, or pain and 
death, were already known ; and as the partaker of a material 
nature, he was naturally subject to all the material laws of the 
constitution. Why should he be specially exempted from the 
law of dissolution ? Why should not his enjoyment of life be 
subject to the same simple condition as it is in the case of all 
the animal tribes that have preceded him — that of eventually 
surrendering it ? But this is not all ; his posterity are, condi- 
tionally, exempted also. Why should " the way of all flesh " 
be suspended — a law of nature be repealed — for a race of be- 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 397 

iiigs, of which the progenitor alone is, as yet, in existence ? 
Even if he himself should be exempted from mortality, as a por- 
tion of the reward of abstaining from a single act, why should 
each of all his posterity be included in the same exemption ? 
He might have lived on for ever without " tasting death ; " but, 
surely, equity did not require that they should not " see death," 
on their way to immortality. Still less could it require that, in 
their way to a higher economy, they should be exempted from 
the actual dangers of a probationary state ; that, on account of 
his refraining from a single act of disobedience, they should be 
raised above the danger of disobedience for ever. Yet such 
appear to have been the grand and sovereign provisions of the 
first law. 

8. Even in the event, then, of that special economy never 
having been instituted, or of its having been withdrawn before 
the hour when Adam violated it, he could have had no just 
ground for complaint, supposing his moral constitution to have 
been left unimpaired. Neither have his posterity any equitable 
reason for complaint, because of its failure when it had been 
instituted, any more than they would have had if it had never 
existed. We do not say that they are not affected by the fall. 
But we do say that there is no ground tcfc believe that they now 
stand on a lower level than they would have been placed on, 
had he never occupied the lofty height from which he fell ; that 
while his trial, if successful, would have exempted them from 
the pre-existing law of death, and from the dangers of a pro- 
bationary state, his failure has only left them where they would 
probably have been (as responsible beings) in these very re- 
spects, if that transient experimental economy had never ex- 
isted ; — for assuredly, in that case, they must be conceived of 
as sinning individually. Admiring the lofty state which that 
special arrangement made possible, they forget both the fact 
that the arrangement itself might never have existed, and the 
question what their condition in that case would have been^ It 
was, indeed, an amazing display of pure Benevolence, not 
merely reducing man's liability to its lowest point, but suspend- 
ing on that point the highest conceivable good, and, by involv- 
ing also the well-being of his descendants, raising his motives 
to obedience to their maximum — an arrangement which could 
never be repeated under equally advantageous circumstances. 
But though it passed away as a mere glorious possibility, its 
departure has left us, as free agentSy no more ground for 
complaint than as if it had lost us the possible enjoyment of a 
34 



398 



MAN. 



sixth or seventh sense, a capacity for flight, or the use of chariots 
of fire. 

9. In proceeding to illustrate the reasons for the probationary 
arrangement, we have to show, first, that considering man's rela- 
tions to his Maker, the appointment of such a law was pronjotive 
of the great end of the Divine manifestation ; and, as such, might 
have been, a priori, expected. In other words, the law was 
objectively reasonable, or adapted to man as the being to whom 
the Manifestation is to be made. Let his position, at that mo- 
ment, be imagined. The whole external universe was, as we 
have already seen, both as to its creation at all, and then as to 
its particular constitution, entirely dependent on the will of God ; 
and, in both respects, it was specifically and supremely designed 
to answer one great end — the manifestation of the Divine char- 
acter. But how ? Evidently the creature to whom it is to be 
revealed must be made capable of knowing that the external 
universe is the expression of the Divine will, or he will be left 
in ignorance of the Divine character — of the very fact he was 
designed to recognize. Even apart from this chief design of his 
intellectual endowment, there could have been no fact equally 
important for him to know (regarded merely as one truth among 
many) as that the world had a Creator, and that the creation 
was, as far as it went, an expression of his character. If it was 
important for man to know any of his relations, it must surely 
have been most important for him to know that relation which 
comprehended every other — his relation of dependence on God. 
To know this was to be in the secret of nature, and in possession 
of the key of happiness ; to remain ignorant of it would have 
been to remain ignorant of the great fact for which an under- 
standing had been given him. This, then, regarding man as an 
intellectual creature merely, was the great point to be provided 
for. True, every law of nature proclaimed it, and every object 
around him virtually repeated it. For even by the taste of one 
fruit, and by the effects of another, the Creator had said to man 
-— " Of this thou mayest eat ; and of this thou shalt not." And 
from these general laws and arrangements of nature, God might 
have left him slowly to infer the great doctrine of universal 
dependence. If, however, he choose to adopt any simple expe- 
dient for giving voice and emphasis to the truth, man will surely 
be grateful ; for God, by so doing, will only be furnishing 
another instance of his benevolence. 

But what if, besides an understanding to recognize the Divine 
character, in the character and dependence of the external uni- 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 399 

verse, man should receive a will, by which he will be able to 
withdraw his attention from this dependence, if .he choose, and 
to act in a manner opposed to it ? What if, in the exercise of 
this will, given him supremely to control his thoughts, and of a 
conscience to influence his will, he should will to place himself 
in hostility to the will of God, as if he were independent of Him ? 
The point to be supremely guarded is now changed from the 
understanding to the will, and the consequences of failure incon- 
ceivably augmented. He is the first being of a new race, 
constituted expressly to recognize the dependence of all things, 
including himself, on the will of God, and voluntarily to appre- 
ciate and to act in harmony with this great fact. By the good 
pleasure of God, he is made a free agent ; while, by moral 
necessity, he can answer the end of his existence, and enjoy 
M'ell-being, only by conforming his free will to the Divine will. 
Without exercising his voluntary powers, he cannot serve God 
acceptably ; and yet without recognizing his dependence, he will 
be acting a falsehood — for dependent he is necessarily — and 
will be robbing God of his glory. His well-being depends, 
not as a matter of contingent arrangement, but of natural neces- 
sity, on the perfect union of his free-agency with his sense of 
dependence ; in other words, on the entire coincidence of his 
will with the Divine will. This coincidence preserved, every- 
thing is preserved ; this disturbed, everything is disturbed. If 
his will rebel, his whole nature will be in revolt, and every 
existing law of the Divine manifestation be violated ; if his will 
remain loyal, guilt will be impossible, and every known law 
of the manifestation will be honored. 

Here, then, was the great — indeed, the only point to be 
guarded, for here is the only inlet to danger. How important 
that man should be early and emphatically apprised of the fact ! 
No holy being, it might be supposed, could have known man's 
position, without being conscious of an earnest desire that his 
relation and obligation should be placed before him in the most 
striking light ! True, again, every law of Nature was calculated 
to remind him of it ; and his own consciousness responded to 
it. But if in the hypothetical case of man's being a creature of 
mere intellect, it would have been important for him to be 
aided by some expedient for giving voice to the dependence 
of Nature, and kind in God to devise it, how much more im- 
portant that some expedient should be resorted to for reminding 
man that his will must be harmonized with that dependence — 
an expedient energetic in proportion to the exigency of the 



400 MAN. 

case — and how worthy of God to adopt it! Surely, if the 
Creator had not spontaneously resorted to such an arrangement, 
the creature himself would have asked it as a favor ; and, in the 
event of a refusal, his guilty posterity would have readily ascribed 
liis defection to the want of some mode of duly impressing him 
with the fact of his dependence, and with the duty of obedience. 

10. Secondly, we have to name some of the respects in which 
the probationary law was specifically adapted to the constitution 
and well-being of man, and thus magnified still further the holy 
Benevolence of the Being who appointed it. In other words, 
we can show that it was subjectively suitable, or adapted to the 
being hy whom, as well as to whom, the Divine manifestation 
is to be made. 

We have shown, generally, that man's well-being depended 
on the coincidence of his will with the Divine will. But here 
the question arises. What was likely to disturb that coincidence ? 
It will, we think, be found (as already intimated)* that man's 
danger may, in this respect, be threefold : he may be ignorant 
of his moral relations, or he may be unconscious of the obliga- 
tions arising out of those relations, or he may not feel the motives 
necessary to induce him voluntarily to discharge those obliga- 
tions. And these we believe to be the only points of danger. 

Now, it will appear that the law selected and enjoined was 
adapted to meet this threefold exigence. Both the grant accom- 
panying it, and the prohibition expressed in it, recognized the 
vital fact, and emphatically affirmed it, that the relation of man 
to God was one of entire dependence. And this provided for the 
first of these habilities. 

On the ground of this relation, the law enforced the corre- 
sponding obligation of unconditional obedience to the will of God, 
for the precept was not a moral, but a positive one ; and thus it 
provided for the second contingency. Every moral duty incum- 
bent on unfallen man is presupposed. Nor could any one of 
these be singled out and enjoined alone, without implying that 
the others were comparatively unimportant. Besides, a moral 
duty might have recommended itself by its own obvious and in- 
herent fitness, and not as the mere expression of the Divine will. 
Whereas, man's obligation to obey the Divine will — of which 
the moral law is only the utterance — is the very thing which 
is to be made known and enforced ; and this could be effected 
only by the enactment of a positive precept. By making his 
well-being contingent on an action neither good nor evil in itself, 

* Supra, pp. 264, 279. 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 401 

but SO far only as it was the subject of Divine law — an act, 
therefore in which the mere will of God Avas his only rule — 
man was most emphatically taught his obligation and dependence. 

And this obligation was enforced by the strongest motives — 
regard for the Divine will, together with the love of happiness 
and the dread of punishment, of a happiness or a punishment 
to be perpetuated both for himself and for his descendants ; and 
thus the law guarded against the third liability. Had man been 
only an intellectual being, indeed, a mere statement, or bare 
instruction, on the subject might have sufficed. But as a volun- 
tary being, influenced by motives, and responsible for his actions, 
it would have been cruel to conceal from him the motives to 
obedience arising from the consequences of his conduct. For 
even if the actual law had been couched in the form of a mere 
request or desire, man could not have disregarded it without 
exhibiting a spirit of disobedience which must have incurred 
the Divine displeasure ; in which case, he might have plausibly 
pleaded that, had he only known beforehand that such would 
have been the result of disobedience, he should have been cer- 
tainly deterred from committing the offence. If, then, obedience 
is to be enforced by motives, it appears desirable that they should 
be accumulated to the utmost degree of strength compatible with 
man's free agency. Accordingly, the sanctions of the first law 
appear to have reached this point. 

11. But is man, thus protected from moral failure at all 
points but one, and thus armed with motives even at that one 
point, to be jealously secluded also from every counter-influence 
from mthout ? Would not this be to make his sense of depend- 
ence overbear his sense of freedom ? Amidst the ten thousand 
voices telling him of his obligations, shall there be no voice to 
remind him of his moral Uberty ? If his trial is to be, not 
nominal merely, but real, all the influences which bear on him 
must not be exclusively on one side. But whence can any 
counter-influence come ? He himself is the fii'st of his race, for 
the nature and perfection of his trial appear to require that he 
should come directly from God, and be exempted from the influ- 
ence of the evil example of any human beings. What, then, if, 
as the Divine voice hath said. Thou shalt not, another voice 
should whisper, Tiiou canst ! Now, such was the nature of the 
temptation. It, at least, reminded man of his power, and of the 
possible results of its exercise. His liberty was thus placed 
over against his dependence, and his nature left in equipoise. 
His strength had been pre-adjusted to his foreseen trial. So that 

34* 



402 ikiAN. 

the trial itself, instead of being an evil, was required by the 
constitution of man, and was looked for in the provisions of the 
probationary arrangement. 

12. Here, then, were reasons for the arrangement, objective 
and subjective, — reasons adapted to man both as the being to 
whom, and as the being to and by whom the Divine manifesta- 
tion is to be made. Respecting the probable reasons for the 
particular act prohibited, nothing need be said. That some- 
thing else might have been forbidden — the use of a particular 
stream, or an approach to a particular spot — and that the same 
truths might have been taught by such prohibition, is quite possible. 
But, still, for reasons such as those adverted to in a previous 
chapter,* if for no others, there is ground to conclude that, in 
the eye of infinite wisdom, the one selected was preferable to 
every other. And, when it is remembered that, as a positive 
precept, the law was only in harmony with the contingent 
arrangements of all external nature, that it was intended to teach 
the same truth as those arrangements teach, and especially to 
point to the fact that they do teach it : namely, the great doctrine 
of our dependence on the Divine will ; and that, in this way, it 
is to be viewed as forming part of the universal system, and 
tending to the same end as every other part of that system, 
nothing but a state of mind akin to that which led to the first 
sin, prevents man from recognizing in it a marked display of 
Divine benevolence. 

13. A reason for the representative aspect of the arrange- 
ment has been suggested, as brought to light by the representa- 
tive character of the grand remedial economy which followed. 
Foreseeing that men, if placed on probation imdividually, would 
all incur the penalty of transgi'ession, God was pleased to make 
their escape from such an issue possible, by the representative 
arrangement which we have been considering, in order (it has 
been said) to foreshadow the representative nature of the evan- 
gelical economy. The first was, in this particular, a rehearsal 
of the second. Adam was " the figure of him that was to come." 
" The gospel was preached before unto " Adam. Now, doubtless, 
the event has disclosed the analogous relation of the first consti- 
tution to the second ; and inspiration itself affirms a resemblance. 
And a grand display it presents of the all-related and compre- 
hensive nature of the Divine plans. StiU, we can only regard 
the analogy supplied as an incidental, not a primary or leading 

* Page 291. 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 403 

reason for tlie existence of the eoonomy which supplies it. For, 
ii'om the moment the first became, in the particular in question, 
an analogy of the second, the second itself was actually pro- 
mised. In the same moment in which the shadow appeared, the 
substance itself was coming into view. 

But with any ulterior reasons for the probationary arrange- 
ment we have not here to do, otherwise we might glance at the 
over-balance of happiness which the prospective failure made 
possible, and at the larger view afforded to us of the resources 
of Him who can thus replace one economy by another, and yet 
harmonize at every step the wants of his subjects with the 
claims of his government and the benevolence of his character. 
But all such references take for granted the failure of man's 
probation, and its consequences. Of some of these consequences 
we have now to speak. 

14. Of the fall itself, as an historical fact, we have already 
spoken under the " law of change." We there saw that, with 
every suitable inducement to obey, man chose to transgress ; 
that, not satisfied with freedom, he essayed independence ; and 
that thus " the commandment, which was ordained to life, he 
found to be unto death." The enactment of that law, we have 
seen, implied three things — that man's constitution was all har- 
mony within ; that it was in adjusted relationship to the objec- 
tive universe, including God himself; and that, continuing to 
guard the single point at which he was left exposed, man him- 
self, and his posterity after him, should continue to enjoy the 
kind of life which he then enjoyed, to the exclusion even of the 
physical suffering and death to which all mere sentient natures 
had ever been, and still were subject. In now proceeding to 
show that the consequences of sin affected him in this threefold 
respect, we shall limit our remarks almost entirely to their 
bearing on the first man, personally considered. The examina- 
tion of their relative bearing, as involving his posterity, belongs 
to the family dispensation. 

15. It can hardly be necessary to preface our remarks on the 
consequences of the first sin by repeating the fact that the par- 
ticular prohibition was only the indirect occasion of transgres- 
sion. The same spirit of disobedience would have been devel- 
oped, it may be assumed, in some other manner (although not 
necessarily), even if that prohibition had never existed. In- 
deed, the probability is that the probationary arrangement did 
not even hasten the moment of transgression, but actually de- 
layed it. For had not the entrance -of evil been provided 



404 MAN. 

against at every avenue save one, the likelihood is that it would, 
in however mitigated a form, have earlier made its appearance. 
Neither must it be imagined that the outward act itself consti- 
tuted the guilt of the first transgressor. This was only the 
external manifestation of the fatal change within. Had the 
forbidden object eluded his grasp, or vanished from his sight, 
as he essayed to take it, the sin would yet have been completed 
in purpose, and, therefore, in the eye of 'God and of conscience, 
though still incomplete in outward and muscular action. So 
that the consequences which ensued are not to be viewed as 
resulting from the outward breach of a positive law, however 
reasonable and benevolent that law might be, but from 
that breach as indicating the internal change of man's nature, 
or his disregard to the will of God formally and solemnly ex- 
pressed. And, accordingly, it will be found that the threatened 
consequences resulting from his disobedience are not arbitrary, 
but the constitutional and properly retributive effects ot it. 

1 6. How sin is metaphysically possible in a perfect being, we 
know not.* And as if to take the subject out of our hands, and 
to leave us to deal with it only as an historical fact, the Bible 
teaches that the thought of man's first sin did not originate with 
himself, but in the mind of a being already fallen, and of 
another order. But the temptation from without was met by 
the consenting movement of the mind within ; and thus to man 
belonged the guilt of adopting and making it his own. As a 
temptation, the act originated without ; as a sin, it truly and 
properly originated in man's own will. His outward act of sin 
implied that the harmony of his moral constitution w^as dis- 
turbed, and its balance gone ; that the higher part of his nature 
had succumbed to the lower — the will had yielded to desire. 
On this point the Bible and a true psychology are one. For, 
if the question be asked, how did sin begin ? both point for the 
occasion to the desires or sensitive part of the man, and for the 

* Innumerable solutions have been attempted. " According to my 
conviction, the origin of evil can only be understood as a fact — a fact 
possible by virtue of the freedom belonging to a created being, but not to 
be otherwise deduced or explained. It lies in the idea of evil that it is 
an utterly inexplicable thing, and whoever would explain it nullifies the 
very idea of it. It is not the limits of our knowledge wliich make the 
origin of sin something inexplicable to us ; but it follows from the essen- 
tial nature of sin as an act of free will, that it must remain to all eternity 
an inexplicable fact. It can only be understood empirically by means of 
the moral self-consciousness." — Dr. A. Neander. Biblical Cab., xxxvi., 
p. 88- 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 405 

cause, to his will. The cause could not be in the feelings or 
desires, for these, apart from the conscience and the will, have no 
moral character whatever — as in infants and irrational animals. 
Nor could the occasion be in the will ; for this acts only in the 
view of motives, of occasions supplied to it. In the probation- 
ary act, these inducements came from two quarters — God and 
Nature ; or through conscience and sense. Those supplied to 
unfallen man by his conscience could lead only to right voli- 
tions. It was, then, by his freely accepting those supplied by 
sense, and consciously and voluntarily violating the rights of 
conscience in so doing, that his mind became vitiated and de- 
praved. 

17. But how did this voluntary act of transgression deprave 
the first man ? We have seen that the human being is com- 
pounded of parts or powers of different values ; and that his 
well-being consists in the maintenance of these powers in their 
respective offices. In this arrangement, the desires and sus- 
ceptibilities are to be subordinated to the law of conscience. 
But, in the instance before us, this order was reversed. The 
will took occasion from the desires to silence conscience, prac- 
tically placed them over it, and destroyed their subordination 
to it. No power was lost from the soul. Man's emotions re- 
tained their susceptibility, though diverted from their highest 
object. His power of moral discrimination was not destroyed, 
though overruled. His will may have remained as active and 
energetic as before; but his chosen motives came now from 
the domain of the passions, of self, and of the instinctive de- 
sires, to the prejudice of those from the higher region of duty 
and regard for the will of God. Susceptibilities whose excite- 
ments (even by temptation), if kept within certain limits, would 
have been perfectly innocent, were permitted to reach a point 
of activity, and to exercise a power, in relation to a proscribed 
object, in violation of those limits. Thus, though the powers of 
his mind remained, each was placed in a new and a false rela- 
tion to the others. Their right order was gone. Their de- 
rangement appeared in the ascendancy acquired by an inferior 
class of motives — emotions excited by earthly and even for- 
bidden objects — over motives which ought to have been held 
supreme. For the evil did not consist in a mere indifference 
to the holy and the divine. Had this been all, it might have 
been remedied by recalling them to his attention. But the 
depraving act tended to repeat itself, and to become habit. 
Depravity develops itself, we think, in this order — first, desires, 



406 MAN. 

harmless in themselves, but made wrong by their exelusiveness : 
next, these desires, already wrong by their exclusion of higher 
objects, acquiring an intensity immeasurably beyond the value 
of the things which excite them ; and then, awakening aversion 
for everything which condemns them, which proposes to become 
a substitute for the objects exciting them, or which exhibits a 
character in strong contrast with them. Thus, at each step, it 
becomes less necessary for the will to put forth an effort in 
order to gratify the desire ; while the incitements to the grati- 
fication, and the likelihood of its repetition, are regularly in- 
creasing. 

18. On this part of the subject, three things are especially 
deserving of attention. First, that the depravation of which we 
are speaking involved no loss of constitutional powers. If 
man's power of voluntary determination had departed, his re- 
sponsibility would have vanished also. If the power of distin- 
guishing between good and evil had been lost, his sanity would 
have ceased with it. But can we doubt his readiness to have 
acknowledged, at any moment after his fall, that he knew better 
than he acted ? or his consciousness of a reserved power, even 
at the worst, to resist the evil to which he yielded ? Secondly, 
that the depravation of man, as a state, lies essentially in the 
sensitive part of his constitution. Although its influence extends 
into every part, and although the consent of the will is essential 
to sin, the vitiosity or depravity itself has its root in the sphere 
of the susceptibihties. And thirdly, that this depravation was 
not an arbitrary infliction, but a natural result. By an act of 
its own, the soul lost its normal state. It chose to violate its 
own constitution. The divine archetype was not withdrawn 
from it. The mind consciously put forth its own power in the 
act which lost it. An arbitrary act of God alone could have 
prevented the loss. And this loss, or the abnormal state of 
mind which it denotes; is depravity. 

19. But man violated more than the law of his own constitu- 
tion ; he violated also a known objective law of God. Here 
was more than the depravation of his own mind ; here was 
actual sin — the infraction of a Divine prescription. " Sin — 
peccatum — denotes, in theological usage, sometimes a state of 
the free being himself, sometimes a conscious property of his 
feelings and acts. The former is sin in the abstract; the 
latter, sin in the concrete.'' * The former denotes a state of de- 

* See " Bretschneider's Dogm.," ii. pp. 5, 6 ; and " Vitringa's Obser- 
vatt. Sac.,'' lib. vi., c. 15. 



o 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 407 

pravation ; the latter, that state concreted or developed in feel- 
ing, intention, or actual volition, in opposition to the known will 
of God. 

Now, the primal law, implied, as we have seen, not only that 
the whole of man's constitution was in harmony with itself, but 
that it was in perfect adjustment to the whole objective uni- 
verse, including God himself. Sin, then, involved the infraction 
of this objective adjustment. It placed man in conscious oppo- 
sition to God. It was an attempt to achieve independence, or 
to render himself happy irrespective of God. " It is the funda- 
mental law of the constitution of things into which he had come, 
that the will of God should be supreme ; but here was an at- 
tempt at autonomy — at raising his own will into the place of 
God's. And thus followed another part of the curse or conse- 
quence of sin. By taking him out of harmony with the Divine 
will, it lost him the Divine complacency, and filled him with 
the consciousness of guilt. Here, again, be it remarked, there 
was no arbitrary infliction, but only a natural result. An arbi- 
trary intervention alone could have prevented it. Nothing less 
could have kept him from being conscious of the nature of his 
own act ; and this consciousness involved a sense of demerit, 
and of such consequent pain as is self-punishment. 

20. And, as a third consequence, this change of character, 
and of relation to the Divine government, involved a corres- 
ponding change of condition. Now, if any part of the conse- 
quences of the first transgression could be regarded as arbitrary, 
it must surely be the altered condition to which man was now 
adjudged ; and yet a little consideration will show that it only 
involved the withdrawment of a gratuitous or conditional ap- 
pointment. 

21. We have seen, for example, that probationary man was, 
by a special provision, protected from moral failure at every 
point but one. This is implied in the very fact, that the law 
discharged him from attending to every other point of duty as 
a point of danger, in order that he might concentrate his powers 
chiefly on a single obligation. The nature of the agency or in- 
fluence by which his obedience was made certain in every other 
respect, is, at present, immaterial. The material point is, that 
such agency, or influence, was not essential to his free agency. 
He would have been accountable without it. It was superin- 
duced on a nature already endowed with all the elements of re- 
sponsibility ; a nature as capable and responsible, in relation to 
every other obligation, as to the particular one in which he was 



408 IVIAN. 

not specially protected. When, therefore, man sinned, this su- 
perinduced provision was simply withdrawn ; its special object 
had been defeated. Man was now to be left, in respect to every 
other law, as he had been left in relation to the probationary 
law — to his own responsible powers as a being fitted for 
moral government. Thus he might have been left from the 
first, as far as equity was concerned ; and thus he now was left. 

22. As a mere sentient being, man's paradisiacal state was as 
purely artificial, or arbitrary, as the special provision, of which 
we have been speaking, rendered his moral state. They were 
two parts of the same peculiar provision. He was condition- 
ally exempted fi-om the operation of the laws of pain and disso- 
lution, laws which had before universally prevailed. But the 
purpose for which he had been so raised having failed, the pro- 
visional exemption was repealed, and he was allowed to fall 
down to the level of the pre-existing law. He was recalled to 
the condition above which equity did not require that he should 
ever have been promoted. Like other animal natures, he must 
go forth into the common world of thorns and biiars ; must 
hunt or toil for food; be conscious of pain; return to dust; 
while his sinful spirit, separated from the body, should go to 
" its own place," and experience the equitable results of its dis- 
obedience. 

23. Here, then, is nothing arbitrary or irrespective of char- 
acter. In eating of the prohibited tree, man does not appear to 
have violated any physical law ; the fruit was pleasant to the 
eye, and good for food. And, by eating it, man's hunger prob- 
ably was as much appeased, his taste gratified, and his bodily 
system as much nourished (even supposing its properties to 
have been exciting) as by eating many other kinds of fruit. To 
have prevented this physical benefit from following, would have 
required an arbitrary intervention. But, on the other hand, 
equally would it have required a special intervention to have 
prevented the moral evil of the act from following, for man had 
voluntarily disobeyed the known will of his Maker. He was 
called to suffer the consequences of those laws only which he 
had actually violated. Physically, he did not directly suffer ; 
nor did he directly suffer intellectually. Probably, as we have 
already remarked, his body was nourished ; and we know that 
his experimental knowledge was, also, fatally increased. He 
left paradise with the same elements of responsibility as he 
possessed when he entered it. From that day, indeed, he be- 
gan to suffer both in body and in mind ; but this was not the 



REASON OF TttE METHOD. 409 

direct, but the indirect effect of a moral evil, operating on an 
all-related constitution. The act which, in itself, was purely in- 
different, became in its reaction as a moral evil, intellectually 
injurious by perverting the understanding, and corporeally in- 
jurious by impairing the health. But, directly and primarily, 
the effects of sin fell on man's moral nature ; and as the primal 
law Avas only a declaration of man's obligation to obey the will 
of God, accompanied with a statement of the conditional results,, 
so the subsequent sentence was only the exposition of man's 
changed condition. It was the announcement that a universal 
law had come into operation, according to which character and 
condition are always approximating. 

24. But what is the effect of man's fall on his posterity? 
The reply to this question belongs, as I have intimated beforCj 
to the next dispensation, when the character and condition of 
his descendants come into view. At the risk, however, of be- 
ing misunderstood, owing to the brevity of the statement, and 
without stopping to point out its relation to the views of Augus- 
tine and Pelagius, or of any subsequent writers on the subject,* 
I will here add, provisionally, that as to the first censequence 
of the fall — man's moral depravati(^n — I believe that we are 
placed by it in precisely the same state as we should have been 
in if the representative relation. had never existed, but Adam 
had violated some one or other of the moral laws under which 
he was placed, in his own individual capacity alone.. That he 
would have sinned in that capacity appears to be likely,, from 
the fact that he did sin under circumstances studiously designed 
to secure his obedience. And that if he had so sinned, the de- 
pravation of his race would have ensued, seems equally certain. 
For while his federal obedience would have secured for them 
exemption, for all time, from the danger of such depravation, I 
believe that the depravation itself, whatever it may be, is trans- 
mitted paternally ;• and consequently, that every parent stands, 
in this respect, in the same relation to the transmission as our 
first father did. This I believe to be the doctrine of Scripture ; 
and this alone seems adequate to account for the universality 
of the evil. 

25. The second consequence of the fall, as the infraction of a 
known law of God, was the consciousness of guilt, and its atten- 
dant remorse. In this respect, again, our relation to the first 

* For these and their opinions, see " Hagenbach's History of Doc- 
trines," §^59, 198,. 176, 245. 

35 



410 MAN. 

man is the same as if the sin had been committed in his own 
private or individual capacity, irrespective of any probation- 
ary law. The guiU of the sin is exclusively his own. Who, 
of all his posterity, ever shared with him in the consciousness 
of it ? This is a commutation which the constitution of the hu- 
man mind makes impossible. Even Eve, who " was first in the 
transgression," was conscious only of her own demerit, and was 
held guilty only because she had actually participated in the 
transaction. 

26. And is not our present condition precisely the same as it 
would have been if no probationary law had existed, but the 
first man had been guilty of some other act of disobedience ? 
That is to say, the blessing forfeited would, in that case, never 
have been heard of. Not having existed, even in prospect, they 
could not have been lost. For surely it will not be contended 
that any special protective influence would have been essential 
to Adam, in order to his progress in excellence, independently 
of the probationary arrangement (what might have been gra- 
ciously accorded to him is a distinct question) ; such a suppo- 
sition would involve the gravest consequences. Even the silent 
implicaitions of Scripture contain nothing to countenance it. 
And not having himself enjoyed it, in the case supposed, he 
could not ha^e forfeited it for us. Independently of the proba- 
tionary law, " death must have been the result to Adam of any 
moral failure whatever."* And as we suppose such moral fail- 
ure to have been foreseen, followed, not necessarily, but cer- 
tainly, by the failure of the race, deatli would have " passed 
upon all men^ for that all [would] have sinned." Then, as now, 
death would have been introduced objectively with Adam, but 
would have been continued subjectively by ourselves, by the 
continuation of depravity in the race. Glorious as our condi- 
tion might have been, then, if our representative head had 
maintained his standing, I do not regard it as worse now that 
he has fallen, than it would have been if such a prospect had 
never been placed within his reach, but he had been left to fail 
in an ordinary manner. On him the consequences fell as a 
punishment ; on his posterity it comes as a legal loss, but the 
loss only of a sublime possibihty, leaving us no more just ground 
of complaint than as if it hiid never existed, and man had been 
left to his own moral resources^ 

27. Had the design of this section been to vindicate the 

* Dr. Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 73. 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 411 

penalty of the lirst transgression, we might have shown that, as 
the laws of the moral world are, at least, as important as those 
of the material, and as the least deviation of the earth from its 
appointed orbit, would certainly be followed by material ruin to 
an unknown extent, so it might surely have been expected, 
even had no threatening accompanied the law, that the known 
violation of it by the being into whose hand the earth had been 
given, would be followed by evil results of unknown magnitude. 
" Sin, in the abstract [or depravation,] is the want of coincidence 
between free beings and the commands of. God; or, which is 
the same thing between those beings and the end for which 
they were created."* By proposing an end of his own, in op- 
position to the divine command, man brought himself into con- 
flict with the will of God, and disqualified himself for answering 
the great end. His guilt consisted not in the mere excess of his 
sensuous desires — indeed, the fact that he was induced to sin, 
partly, by the desire of knowledge, intimates this — but in that 
spirit of autonomy by which he attempted to become a separate 
power. And is moral government — the great rule of right be- 
tween the Supreme lawgiver and tiis subjects — the only law 
which is to be violated with impunity ? 

28. We might have shown, also, that although the probation- 
ary arrangement was in its highest character, perfectly unique, 
yet that so much of its fundamental principle pervades the his- 
tory of families and communities, as to prove that it forms a 
part of the great system of Divine government. Men continue 

* Bretschneider's Dogm., ii. p. 5. See also Doederlein's Inst., ii. p. 99 j 
and Reinhard's Dogm., p. 297. 

According to Hugo of St. Victor, (Lib. i. P. 6, c. 1 — 22,) " the first sin 
was the twofold disobedience to the law of nature and the law of disci- 
pline. Man, abandoning the right medium, desiring the higher good, 
rising above himself, and striving, in the pride and presumption of his 
heart, both to be equal to God, and to possess him before the appointed 
time, fell from his state of innocence. According to ' Deutsche Theo- 
logie,' c. 2, the Scriptures say that sin is only the turning of the creature 
from the unchangeable to the changeable — i. e., from the perfect to the 
imperfect and incomplete, and principally to himself Now observe, when 
man puts himself in possession of anything that is ^ood, or appropriates 
it, as 6emr/ — when he imagines that he has his being from himself ; as 
life — when he imagines that he has life in himself; and as knowledge — 
imagining tliat he knows much, and can do much ; in short, when he en- 
deavors to olitain all that which is called good, imagining that he is the 
same, or that the same belongs to him, then he rebels against his Maker. 
Adam fell by accepting, assuming, or appropriating to himself that which 
belonged to God." — Hagenbach's Hist, of Doctrines, vol. ii., § 176. 



412 MAN. 

to suffer in their spiritual as well as their temporal interests, 
by the guilty conduct of parties from whom they have not 
even descended. So that no objection can be alleged against 
the consequences of the primary probation, the spirit of which 
is not applicable against the entire plan of the Divine adminis- 
tration. 

29. But this points to the grand inquiry, Why has God al- 
lowed the existence of evil in any degree, and in any form ? 
And, first, did He foresee its existence ? That He did so might 
be shown from the infinite perfection of his nature. His pre- 
science comprises alike the futura necessaria and the futura con- 
tingentia. And this, as we have before seen, without any inter- 
ference with man's freedom ; for man performs not the given 
action because it is foreknown by God, but God foreknows the 
action because man, as a free agent, would perform it. Nor 
did his foreknowledge of the certainty of man's defection affect 
the freedom of the sinner any more than his foreknowledge of 
the certainty that they will never apostatize affects the freedom 
of the blessed in heaven. But, besides that it would be incon- 
sistent with every just view of the character of God to suppose 
that He was disappointed by the entrance of sin into the world, 
or was taken by surprise by it, events immediately subsequent 
evinced that the plans which Providence had arranged clearly 
presupposed that man's earthly condition would be one of sin- 
fulness. 

30. Could God have prevented the entrance of sin? The 
majority of the answers which have been given to this question 
amount simply to this, — that, constituted as man is, he could 
not be restrained from sinning, without having a restraint placed 
on his free agency. But " we are but little enlightened by 
learning that any being in the state of man must suffer what 
man suffers, when the only question that requires to be resolved 
is, why any being is in this state ?"* And yet the acutest minds 
are in danger of being ensnared by this fallacy. Thus, " the 
difficult question, whence comes evil? (says Archbishop King)t 
is not unanswerable. For it arises from the very nature and 
constitution of created beings, and could not be avoided without 
a contradiction."t Lord Brougham, in his profound and mas- 
terly dissertation on the origin of evil, after exposing the soph- 
ism concealed in this statement — the assumption that the exist- 
ing constitution of things is absolutely unavoidable even to God 

* Dr. Johnson's Worlcs, vol. vin., p. 39. t Chap, iv., § 9. 



O 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 413 

— entangles himself in the same fallacy. After admitting that 
death is an evil, he adds, " that man might have been created 
immortal, is not denied ; but if it were the will of the Deity to 
form a limited being, and to place him upon the earth for only 
a certain period of time, his death was the necessary consequence 
of this determination."* True ; but the question is, wdiy a be- 
ing subject to this determination should be created, not whether 
the determination itself, if formed, would be certainly carried 
into effect. 

31. An attempt is then made to answer the question, by say- 
ing, that as moral excellence cannot exist without free will, nor 
free w^U without the capability of evil as well as of good, the 
creation of a moral agent necessarily supposes the possibility of 
evil. But if by possibility be meant liability, in the sense of 
danger, we reply, that not only is this to beg the entire ques- 
tion, but that facts disprove the truth of the statement. With- 
out adverting to the ever-blessed God, in w^hose nature infinite 
liberty and absolute holiness meet, and are one, what shall we 
say of the unfallen angels ? and, still more, of the spirits of the 
just made perfect ? They lose not their moral liberty by en- 
tering Heaven, and yet their standing is supposed to be then 
made infallibly secure ? If, however, by liability to sin be 
meant simply the 'power of sinning, we freely admit that we can- 
not conceive of a created free agent naturally exempted from 
such power ; w^e cannot conceive of that power being withdrawn 
from his nature, even in Heaven, for it seems an essential 
element of moral agency. Our only difficulty in admitting this 
view, if we feel any, must arise from an impression, however 
faint or latent, that power to sin will, sooner or later, end in 
actual sinniiig ; that power and danger, in this instance, mean 
the same thing ; that what can be, will be ; that the power of 
acting wrong cannot be conjoined with the certainty of acting 
right. Yet the power of acting wrong existed in " the Holy 
One of God," as a moral agent, conjoined with as infallible a 
certainty of acting right, as if he could not have acted other- 
wise. It is, therefore, quite conceivable of a race of moral 
agents, that they should possess the power of sinning, while en- 
tirely exempt from the liability or danger ; the former, as an 
essential element of free agency, the latter, owing primarily to 
a sustaining influence acting on the native excellence of their 
characters, and next, to the law-like stability resulting from 

* Diss, on Paley, vol. ii., p. 71. 
35* 



414 MAN. 

holy habits. So that if it be an affair of Divine ability merely, 
or a question whether or not God could have so constituted 
man as to prevent the entrance of evil — apart from every 
other consideration — we are constrained to reply in the affirm- 
ative. 

32. Then returns the great question, Why did God create 
man in a state in which he would be liable to sin ? We stop 
not to notice the theories which have been devised to account 
for the existence of evil, from the Manichean hypothesis of two 
eternal principles, or from the earlier Determinism of Chrysip- 
pus, to the Optimism of Leibnitz and Wolff. We have re- 
pudiated the notion entertained by some, that, as material 
qualities are known only by their opposites, or as knowledge is 
divided into the two branches of negative and positive, so good 
could be known to us only as it is seen on a dark ground of 
evil. Neither can we believe, with others, that the misery of 
one world is to be perpetuated, in order to enhance, by contrast, 
the happiness and the sense of obligation of other worlds. 
•Still, when we reflect on the immense preponderance of 
benevolent design which characterizes the works of God ; on 
the fact that evil never appears to exist in any form as an end, 
but only as an incidental effect ; that good, on the contrary, 
appears to exist for its own sake, because it is pleasing to God, 
and as an ultimate end; and that in proportion as we escape 
from our ignorance, apparent anomalies and evils are found to 
be real benefits, we can well believe that there are lofty ends 
to be answered by the permission of evil which could not be 
attained in any other way. Such, for example, may be the 
essential nature of created mind, that it could not, except by 
the personal experience of evil, be capable of the highest degree 
of holiness and enjoyment. This view, it is admitted, would 
avail only in relation to those in whom all evil is to be ulti- 
mately extinguished. For the reasons assigned, however, we 
are justified in the firm persuasion that the plan which ac- 
tually permits the existence of evil, will ultimately be found 
productive of a greater amount of good than a plan which en- 
tirely excludes it, and that the evil is permitted for the sake of 
the good. 

33. Further, our theory points us for the ultimate reason of 
the permission of evil to the final design of all things — the 
manifestation of the Divine all-sufficiency, which also implies 
the highest excellence of the creature. Sin itself, indeed, is 
without reason, — is against it. Objectively considered, it is a 



REASON OP THE METHOD. 415 

causeless act. As such, it is inherently and essentially inexpli- 
cable, and "whoever would explain evil, nullifies the very idea 
of it," And being without any objective cause, it could not have 
been designed^ or have entered into the Divine plan as a primary 
and essential part of it. But although evil owes its existence to 
nothing causative in the Divine purpose — although it is so far 
from being dependent on him in this respect, that its very essence 
lies in its being an effect independent of, and hostile to him — 
w^e may confidently affirm that he would not have permitted its 
existence if he could not have made it the occasion for an ulte- 
rior display of his inexhaustible resources of excellence. 

The creation of innumerable worlds, each differing in some 
respects from all the rest, illustrates the plenitude of the Divine 
power. And our theory suggests the analogous inquiry, whether 
or not it may not be the design of God to demonstrate the 
plenitude of his moral excellence by "conducting many [worlds] 
to glory," each varying in its moral character from all the rest 
— each starting from a different point in the ascending scale of 
spiritual excellence, and passing through different states of moral 
discipline ; and whether or not the human race may not be one 
of the orders of beings by whom and to whom the demonstration 
is to be made — one of the earliest, perhaps — and destined to 
exercise a moral influence on every other order of responsible 
beings yet to come. Though the existence of evil itself, there- 
fore, is without reason or foundation, the permission of it may 
repose on the profoundest of all reasons — on the occasion which 
it supplies for the demonstration of the infinite holiness and un- 
bounded grace of God in the highest well-being of the creature. 
For by the remedial method -which He has been pleased to 
adopt, every moral attribute of the Godhead has been placed 
before the universe in a light in which we cannot conceive that 
it could ever otherwise have been seen. To "the principalities 
and powers in heavenly places," depths of the Divine excellence 
are made accessible, which must else have forever remained 
unfathomed, and immeasurable means of happiness, and motives 
to improvement, placed before them. 

34. But that which, at this point of our subject, is especially 
deserving of attention is, that while the objective existence of 
evil is thus reconcilable with the character of God for a given 
end, tliat very end is, that He may show his subjective hatred 
and utter irreconcilableness to evil, and his power to rescue 
from its grasp. Hence, the commission of the first sin was forth- 
with followed by a self-executing sentence expressive of the 



416 MAX. 

Divine displeasure ; and that sentence was accompanied by a 
gracious intimation that a conflict with evil had commenced, des- 
tined to end in triumph. According, also, to our view, the Divine 
permission of evil must be perfectly compatible with the free 
agency and guiltiness of the sinner. Only on this condition is 
the proof of the Divine all-sufficiency possible. Had the first 
sinner been entitled to say, "Why, then, doth he yet find fault, 
for who hath resisted his will ?" any display of mercy would 
have been impossible. The promised remedy would only have 
been an act of justice — the reparation of injustice. There could 
be no more of mercy in the promise than there was of justice in 
the threatening. The " exceeding riches of grace " in the remedy, 
presupposed "the exceeding sinfulness of sin" in the sinner. 
Accordingly, his own nature was against him. The moral con- 
sequence arose not out of any arbitrary arrangement of man's 
constitution, but from the very nature of things. So conscious 
was he of his demerit, that his own conscience forestalled the 
sentence of the law, and began to anticipate its execution, while 
the promise which inspired him with hope was the first intima- 
tion of a scheme of all-sufficient grace. Even that grace, however, 
is not a rescue of man from justice, but only from the punish- 
ment to which he had made himself liable. The same justice 
is still on the throne ; and the grand expedient of mercy is the 
highest homage to its claims. 

35. One important deduction results from the preceding re- 
marks on the probationary arrangements, and its issue. If we 
had been only now made acquainted with the trial of man as a 
recent event, we should, we think, be warranted in expecting 
that whatever great principle God intended to illustrate, or what- 
ever leading end he proposed to gain, by that primary arrange- 
ment, He would not abandon at the termination of that particular 
trial, but would steadily keep in view, through every subsequent 
stage of his intercourse with man, until the principle was fully 
received by man, and the end perfectly attained by God. Now, 
we have seen that the object was unquestionable ; to exhibit the 
great fact, that so absolute are the claims of God on man's volun- 
tary obedience, and that so necessary is man's dependence on 
God, that his well-being, and his consequent power of answering 
the great end of his creation, depend on the perfect coincidence 
of his will with the Divine will ; to exhibit this fact so as to 
respect man's moral freedom, or to leave him at liberty, if he 
will, to act independently of, and in opposition to, the Divine 
will ; and, in the event of man's failure, to take occasion from it 



o 



REASON OF THE METHOD. 417 

SO to display the Divine resources as shall still further illustrate 
the all-sufficiency of God, and the dependence of man, and aug- 
ment his motives to entire obedience. That this was the great 
end proposed, we say, is obvious, for this was the end actually 
gained; and we are not to suppose that any other end was 
aimed at than that which was attained. 

36. But if such was the design of that primary dispensation, 
we know of no reason, we say, why it should be viewed as an 
isohited act, or as involving principles never to be illustrated 
again ;.and not rather as the first in a series of arrangements, 
the great principle of which it foreshadowed and embodied. 
On the contrary, we do see greater reason than ever, why these 
principles should now become permanent characteristics of the 
Divine procedure. For if, when man had as yet evinced no 
symptoms of autonomy, or self-will, the Supreme Governor 
saw fit, by a distinct enactment, to place his obligation in the 
strongest light, the necessity for impressing him with the fact 
of his obligation and dependence is not diminished by his exhi- 
bition of self-will, but immeasurably increased. If, as the 
event proved, there was reason for making this the first end 
which God aimed at with unfallen man, surely every act of 
disobedience strengthens the reason for continuing to aim at 
the same end even to the last. 

37. And is not this conclusion further corroborated by all 
that we are warranted to infer respecting the probation of the 
angelic race ? Whether sin had come into the universe before 
them, or was absolutely originated by them ; where they spent 
their probation ; what was made the test of their obedience ; 
and what was the immediate occasion of the awful defection of 
some of them, are questions on which we stop not to speculate. 
It is enough for us to know that, with every suitable induce- 
ment to stand, they fell ; that (judging from certain gleam-like 
hints) the defection commenced even witii their chief ; that the 
crown fell from the head of created beings. In him all creation 
was humbled. Nor does the fact, that the defection was numeri- 
cally partial, neutralize the great lesson of created dependence. 
It only proves that each member of the race occupied (unlike 
man) a separate standing ; that the sin of one did not necessitate 
the sin of another ; that that which is temptation to one may not 
be the same to another ; and that those who fell might have re- 
tained their ground of holy obedience like the rest of their rafce. 
But though many of them maintained their allegiance then, it did 
not follow that they would necessarily retain it through all sub- 



418 MAN. 

sequent time. The great truth, which they must have deduced 
from the appaUing event, was, that they themselves were in 
danger of defection. And though the vivid apprehension of this 
danger would naturally exercise a salutary preventing influence, 
it proclaimed anew the fact of their dependence, and demon- 
strated that they could find security only in a Divine confirma- 
tion. The great moral of man's defection is but the repetition 
of a lesson already taught to an elder family of creation. 

38. We may confidently look on it, therefore, as a leading 
principle of the Divine procedure, that all the successive ^dispen- 
sations of God to man will aim, in a manner consistent with 
man's free agency, to impress him with his obligations and de- 
pendence ; to increase his motives to obedience ; and, by taking 
occasion from his vain endeavors at independence, to enlarge 
the display of the Divine all-sufficiency. This, indeed, is only 
the legitimate extension and apphcation of that law of the Divine 
manifestation which stands at the head of this " Part," and 
which we have called " The Reason of the Method." Besides 
which, and chiefly, the expectation that the principle described 
will be invariably pursued, is in harmony with the great end, 
and is essential to it. That end is the manifestation of God's 
all-sufficiency. But a spirit of autonomy and independence is 
a virtual protest against that end, and the hostile introduction of 
a separate end. And the triumph of that all-sufficiency is to 
appear in the restoration of harmony between the Supreme will 
and the subordinate, in a manner which shall accord with the 
freedom, and secure the blessedness of the creature, and redound 
to the glory of Him, for whom, and by whom, all things consist. 



419 



THIRD PART. 

THE ULTIMATE END OF THE METHOD. 



CHAPTER XX. 
Sect. I. — Power. 

1 We now advance to the consideration of the great princi- 
ple, that both the laws of the method, and the proximate reason 
of it, find their chief end, in this stage of the Divine procedure, 
in contributing to prove the all-sufficiency of the Holiness 
of God. In remarking on this subject, under the first law, 
we stated that we do not claim for this opening human dispen- 
sation a display of holiness exclusively, but pre-eminently. 
Having shown, also, that each preceding display of the Divine 
perfection may be expected to be brought forwards and en- 
larged through each successive stage of creation, and having 
assigned the grounds of this expectation, we have now to begin 
by remarking on its fulfilment in the continued exercise of the 
Divine Power, 

2. From that point in duration, unimaginably remote, when 
the material of the universe first came into being, the argument 
for the power of God had gone on increasing during every mo- 
ment of the period. At the coming of man, not only were all 
the pre-existing forces of nature continued in activity, but new 
displays of power were added to them. The inorganic, the 
organic, and the sentient worlds, felt anew the impress of the 
Creative will. 

3. But here — besides that the Creator still " upholdeth all 
things by the word of his power," and has more than ever to 
uphold — here is a creature with a will, the very image of the 
Divine will, and therefore of the Divine power ; for the will of 
God is the producing power, or cause, of the created universe. 
Here is a being who, in the exertion of his will, first obtains 
the conception of a cause, — an agent, who, because he is not 



420 MAN. 

blindly and necessarily determined from without, but is con- 
scious that he himself really produces an effect, finds, in that 
consciousness, the primitive idea of a cause. This being, armed 
with a muscular mechanism of most diversified application, is 
placed here in the midst of a wide theatre filled with a variety 
of objects to be laid hold of, and dealt with, and acted upon, as 
the energy ol his will shall direct. Man, " the great power of 
God," has come into the creation as a new antecedent in the 
sphere of causation, to produce new consequents. 

4. Some, indeed, have conjectured that unfallen man could 
command the laws of nature ; that, to him, that which is now 
preternatural was natural and easy. Nor do we know of any 
valid objection to the view ; for, fatal as such a prerogative 
would be to man in his fallen condition, we cannot conceive of 
his using it in the case supposed, except under the direction of 
the Supreme will. As an illustration of our present subject, 
however, the opinion, besides being conjectural, is quite unne- 
cessary. Here are the kingdoms of nature, inorganic, vege- 
table, and animal, hitherto destitute of a free finite will ; and 
man is brought, and set down in the midst of them, with a will, 
with the muscular nieans of exerting his will upon them all, 
and with authority to do so. The very first effort which his 
will makes to move his arm, awakens in him the idea of a caus- 
ative power. He has, then, a will to act, a muscular apparatus 
to act with, and a world of objects to act upon ; some of these 
he will appropriate and apply to uses which they never before 
served ; others he will mould into new shapes ; some he will 
destroy; others he will cultivate and develop; here, dividing 
unity into plurality ; there, reducing plurality to unity ; adding 
to his own muscul'ar apparatus the force of the elements, and 
the muscular mechanism of the brute ; and, by falhng in with 
the laws of matter, arming himself with their unknown powers. 
For the charter from the Supreme will ran thus : " Replenish 
the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the whole." 
And in the very power with which man was endowed for sub- 
jecting the world, he became enabled to apprehend the power 
which had created it. By his will it is that the external crea- 
tion becomes to him a manifestation of the Divine power ; while 
that same will constitutes a manifestation of power immeasura- 
bly surpassing that creation itself 

5. In this way it is that man is enabled to reason from a lim- 
ited effect to an unlimited cause — from a bounded creation to 
a Creator of boundless power. The method and the validity 



r^ 



THE ULTIMATE END. 421 

of such reasoning we have examined and ilhistrated already, 
and sliall not here reconsider them.* As an intelligent being, 
man perceives that the necessity for a hmited creation hes in 
the material itself, and that he cannot therefore justly infer from 
such inherent and necessary limitation any limitation of Crea- 
tive power. As a being causative as well as intelligent, he in- 
terprets all that the Creator has done, not as the measure, but 
the sample, of what He can do. Conscious, himself, of a con- 
stant reserve of power, he instinctively looks on the creation as 
the shadowing forth of a power not exhausted, but simply ex- 
emplified. " Lo, these are parts of His ways, but the thunder 
of His power who can understand !" As a being moral, or re-, 
sponsible, as well as voluntary and intelHgent, he has to remem- 
ber that even if a creation metaphysically infinite Avere possi- 
ble, the evidence of the fact, as a proof of the infinite power- 
of God, must not be such as to compel his belief; that it must 
and would be limited, if for no other reason than that of respect! 
for his moral nature. And when he remembers that he stands 
in the midst of a universe which practically, and for him, has- 
no limits ; that it is perpetually diversified with changes innu- 
merable, and with the play of forces unimaginable, as if for the 
purpose of putting all thought of a limited agency to flight ; 
and that the whole is progressive — the " arm of God being 
still bare," still evolving and working out the immeasurable 
scheme, every new moment bringing with it an incalculable 
amount of new evidence of the Divine power to be added to all 
the accumulations of the past, and that of such increase there is 
no prospect of an end, — he cannot but feel himself in the pre- 
sence of a God all-sufficient. 

6. But man's profoundest conceptions of power arise from his 
own influence over mind. His sway over nature, indeed, is 
great, and is ultimately traceable to his intelligence. His dis- 
covery and application of the Mechanical Powers put back the 
limits of his power immeasurably.. When he first announced 
the theoretic possibility that, with a point to stand on, he could 
lift the world, he seemed to lift higher the arched heavens above 
him, and indefinitely enlarged the horizon of his mental activity. 
Could tiie father of the race have foreseen the energy which 
the human will would put forth on the external world, genera- 
tion after generation, his prophetic tongue would surely have 
hesitated to foretel a thousandth part of its vast and varied 

Pre-Adamite Earth, pp. 130 — 146. 
36 



422 MAN. 

efforts. But the power which man was constituted to put forth 
in self-government was of a surpassing order. The volcano, 
the tempest, and all the great elements of nature in their most 
active form, are only emblems of energies enclosed in the human 
breast ; and in keeping them tranquil, and even resolutely still- 
ing them, in the presence of exciting causes, he is putting forth 
a godlike power, and governing a world. Still loftier does our 
conception of human power become, when the example of indi- 
vidual self-government is seen commanding the esteem, and 
silently swaying the movements of the multitude, and carrying 
all their diversified characters, like a single energy, in its own 
direction. The power which noisily proclaims itself in the 
storm is less than the silent power which pervades the calm. 
In proportion as immorality attains perfection, it labors with 
ever-deepening hostility to subvert every trace of virtue ; but 
its utmost spasms of energy fall short of the quiet might appro- 
priate to the self-governed spirit. Such a mind is in sympathy 
with Power in its fountain, and touches in its movements all the 
laws and outward expressions of that Power. But the sub- 
limest of all its efforts is that in which it repairs to that Foun- 
tain — goes into the presence of God — and there puts forth its 
highest energy in a direct appeal to the Divine will. By such 
an act, it has " power with God ; " unites itself with His power, 
and becomes possessed of a subordinate omnipotence. 



Sect. II. — Wisdom. 

1. In the constitution of man. Power is seen, as in the Pre- 
adamite Earth, subservient to Wisdom. Here, also, all the 
displays of wise design, or final causes, characteristic of organ- 
ized and sentient existences, are again repeated. But, here, 
new and surpassing illustrations of wisdom appear. 

2. The relations which met in the first human being are, to 
us, innumerable. As to his objective relations, what evidence 
of design appears merely in his means of knowledge ! that his 
senses, overpassing the media of perception, should perceive 
only the objects themselves which it is useful for him to know : 
that the senses should be adjusted and adapted to their proper 
objects — the eye, for instance, being neither microscopic nor 
telescopic — and the ear placing us neither in a world of whis- 
pers, nor of perpetual thunders : that the senses should have 
been perfectly adapted to each other — sight and touch for ex- 



O 



THE ULTIMATE END. 423 

ample, not contradicting, but corroborating, each other : and that 
the mind should be so constituted as to collect and combine the 
notices of the several senses into the unity of knowledge. 

3. Again, that as individual objects are innumerable, and 
consequently could not be remembered, but would overwhelm 
the mind with confusion, it should have been made capable of 
recognizing the relations which exist among them, and of ar- 
ranging them accordingly. That is to say, that as the uni- 
verse has its plan, so the mind should have a power of 
arranging correspondent with it ; that, as Grod has classed and 
continues everything in genera and species, "after its kind," 
man should be able to classify them on the same principle ; thus 
placing and distiibuting a world of objects, and reproducing, in 
the inner circle of his own mind, however imperfectly, parts of 
the great plan of the Creator of the universe ! An exercise 
of this description was one of the first to which the Divine 
Creator solicited the mind of his new-made creature. For, 
it is recorded that when the Lord God had formed the crea- 
tures, " He brought them to Adam to see what he would call 
them." And although this first effort at generalization may 
have been only on a small scale, yet must it be regarded aa ex- 
hibiting the promise of all subsequent efforts, inasmuch as it 
evinced the existence of the powers necessary to make them. 
And again ; that, as all external objects, so related among them- 
selves, are also related to the Great First Cause of the whole, 
the mind should feel itself led away from the visible to the 
invisible to seek for Him ; that since Nature, as Bacon observes, 
ascends " hke a pyramid " from multitude to unity, the mind 
should be prepared to ascend also till it finds its Maker enthroned 
on the summit ; all this " cometh forth from him who is won- 
derful in counsel, and excellent in working ! " 

4. Equally replete with the indications of Divine design is 
man's emotional nature. Such, for instance, is that curiosity which 
prompts the desire of knowing, what, as yet, we know not ; and 
the love of novelty which prevents us from limiting our attention 
to a single object ; the love of truth which disposes us to know 
and to represent things as they are ; and the love of communi- 
cating truth which impels us to diffuse our knowledge ; the hope 
which impels us forwards where success is possible ; and the 
fear which detains us from unnecessarily incurring danger. All 
these are necessary, and all these exist and concur, as means or 
as motives, in the pursuit of knowledge alone.* 

* Admirable illustrations of Design derived from Psychology are to be 



424 MAN. 

5. But even these means and motives would be useless to 
man, as an accountable being, without the concurrence of other 
and higher powers. Accordingly, he is not only capable of being 
moved, his will enables him to determine the direction of the 
movement, and his conscience indicates the direction which 
ought to be taken. Now, if we imagine a being entirely desti- 
tute of either of all these faculties, we imagine a being entirely 
unfit for Eden or for earth ; and yet all these faculties are 
united man. 

6. But even when we have enumerated all man's objective 
relations, (which we have not,) " the half hath not been told." 
His subjective relations still remain. Descending into the world 
within him, we find that he is capable of operating on the phe- 
nomena of his own mind, and that all these sustain relations 
among themselves. By one provision, a single thought is made 
the means of recalling a train of other thoughts ; by another, 
the mind is enabled to arrest any single thought in this train, 
and to make it the subject of fixed attention ; and, by another, 
it is made conscious of pleasure or pain, of approbation or dis- 
approbation, according as it deems the act to be right or wrong. 
This last provision evinces the highest wisdom. For, while as 
an intellectual being, man perceives that certain acts conduce 
only to his animal gratification, and certain others to the present 
gratification of his afifections, and others still to the purpose of his 
welfare at a future point of time, his moral nature in v^olves the 
reason why, and the amount to which, these classes of action 
are to be performed, by referring him to the will of God as his 
highest rule, and to the enjoyment of his favor as the highest 
happiness. So that if the wisdom of the means are to be esti- 
mated by a reference to the end, here is adaptation which eyinces 
the hand of God. 

7. But nearly all that we have said under this particular, re- 
spects faculties and relations which co-exist in the human mind. 
Regarding man as a. progressive being, other remarkable provi- 
sions come to light. Some of these, indeed, are presupposed 
already, but their manifestation depends on man's successive 
existence. There is the provision by which, having attended 
to the present, we are enabled to recall it when past; and 
especially the arrangement, that this power of memory should 
be most tenacious of things interesting, things well considered, 

found in Lord Brougham's "Prel. Discourse to Paley's Nat. Theology," 
pp. 15 — 1 52. And these are ably supplemented and remarked on in Dr. 
Turton's " Nat. Theology," pp. 65, etc. 



THE ULTI5L4.TE END. 425 

things felt to be intiinsically valuable, things which there is an 
anxiety to remember. There is the provision by which we can 
anticipate and imagine the future. There is the wonderful effect 
of habit, by which exertion, which might have become increas- 
ingly difficult and distasteful by repetition, becomes more and 
more easy and agreeable. There are the marvellous phenomena 
of the imagination, co-extensive with the entire range of the 
mind's activity ; aiding it even in the department of demonstra- 
tive science ; peopling the distant and the future with creations 
of its own ; and, like the setting sun, when it bathes and blends 
in the same radiance the mountain top, and the cloud resting 
there, uniting earth with heaven. And then there are those 
primary elements of reason, or fundamental laws of belief, pre- 
supposed in all the operations of the mind, and by which it 
establishes its kindred to the Divine Mind 

8. Even in this specification, numerous indications of the Di- 
vine wisdom in the constitution of man have been omitted. 
Those of his bodily frame in which he, more or less, resembles 
the animal kingdom ; as well as the peculiar distribution and 
office of his nerves ; the mechanism of his hand ; the erect pos- 
ture of his body ; the exquisite concurrence of means which re- 
sults in the power of speech; and the orderly succession in 
which his powers, both bodily and mental, come into exercise, 
and arrive at maturity. By the plan which we have prescribed 
for ourselves, or rather which God has prescribed — for we fol- 
low His own objective plan — we pass over, in this estimate of 
individual man, all those indications of design which the consti- 
tution of the family, and of society, will bring to light — such 
as the influence of anger in restraining injustice ; of shame, in 
preventing the world from becoming one wdde scene of open 
licentiousness ; and the wonderful arrangement by which a 
world of conscious agents, each of which is aiming only, in 
certain particulars, at his own good, should be found, by the 
result, to have been unconsciously promoting the good of the 
whole ! 

9. But limited as our view must be, what a profound impres- 
sion of the Divine wisdom is it calculated to produce ! When 
it is remembered that " of the twenty independent circumstances 
which enter into beneficial concurrence in the formation of an 
eye," it is, according to the doctrine of probabilities, more than 
a million to one that none of them should occupy an indifferent 
or a hurtful position, who shall calculate the proofs of intelli- 
gent contrivance in the human constitution, considering that the 

36* 



426 MAN. 

eye itself is but a fraction of the multitudinous arrangements 
which meet and harmonize in man ; and that it is the product 
of all these members which represents the amount of evidence 
afforded by them of a wise Designer ! 

10. Does it say much for the wisdom of a designer, when 
those who have profoundly studied his arrangements, feel as 
certain that parts which they cannot understand, will finally 
prove to conduce to the end he has in view, as much as the 
parts which they do comprehend ? Yet this is the confidence 
which the mind entertains relative to the Divine arrangement 
of the human constitution ; a confidence justified by the fact that 
time only serves to shame us out of our suspicions by explain- 
ing its mysteries, and by increasingly disclosing the hand of the 
Maker. Does it reflect credit on the skill of an artist, when the 
attempt of every other artist to improve on his design ends in 
utter failure ? Such has been the fate of every attempt, how- 
ever innocently designed, and however long persevered in, to 
force or to modify the constitution of man. The best aims in 
its behalf are found to be the soonest attained by adapting the 
means employed to its recognized laws. Does it evince the 
harmony and unity of a complicated design, when no one part 
can be affected without every other part sharing, more or less, 
in the effect ? Who does not know that this is eminently the 
case with the constitution of man ! 

11. And yet long and intently as the human mind has been 
occupied in gazing at itself, and much, at length, as it may have 
ascertained concerning itself, it is conscious of complexities in 
its phenomena too close to be analyzed ; of relations too delicate 
to be traced, too- evanescent to be classed, or even named ; of 
parts unexplored and unknown. Now, with all these wonderful 
capabilities shut up in his nature, did the first man stand erect 
in Paradise in the first hour of his existence. In the moment 
of his creation, while yet he may be said to have been under 
the hand of his Maker, he was to be regarded only in relation 
to space ; but with the first moment of consciousness commenced 
his relations to time, and Providence began to encircle him. A 
moment before, and unnumbered relations were unapplied, and 
agencies unemployed ; a moment after, and they were gathering 
around him, and beginning to take effect. Each sensation of 
which he became conscious, each faculty of his mind as it came 
into activity, each step he took, disclosed new relations between 
the phenomena within, and placed him in new relations to the 
world without. With that first moment ^nds began to be an- 



O 



THE ULTIMATE END. 427 

swercd by means which had been originated unknown ages be- 
fore ! Into what a school was man then introduced ! What 
materials for instruction, wonder, and admiration lay around 
him — a world of prepared and selected objects! Could he 
have foreseen the process of education and intellectual improve- 
ment through which his race would pass ; could he, as he began 
to breathe, have foreseen one, three or four thousand years sub- 
sequent, weighing the air he inhaled ; and, two thousand years 
after that, others busied in compressing it, expanding it, analyz- 
ing and reducing it to its elements ; could he, as he first gazed 
at the starry heavens, have foreseen one measuring the dis- 
tances, and calculating the magnitudes and velocities of the 
heavenly bodies ; another describing the principle which holds 
them all together, ascertaining the weight of bodies at the sur- 
face of distant worlds, calculating, to a second of time, the pe- 
riods of their reappearance, after the revolutions of centuries ; 
others sagaciously conjecturing the existence of planet after 
planet, and the position of their orbits ; or anticipating, by ages, 
the discovery of truths the most remote from ordinary appre- 
hension, and even inventing the calculus which would make 
such anticipations possible ; could he, as he first stood erect on 
" the firm-set earth," have foreseen the discovery, that it is 
in rapid whirl, (a discovery calculated to set all thought in 
motion also,) and could he then have looked into his own mind, 
and have marked the multitudinous subjective relations which 
these discoveries presuppose, as well as the exquisite corres- 
pondencies of the subjective to the objective, must he not have 
trembled at the consciousness of his .own capabilities, and have 
reached by a single step, that inevitable conclusion of natural 
theology, "He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He 
that planted the ear, shall he not hear ? He that teacheth man 
knowledge, shall he not know ?"* The addition of that single 
mind — - the lighting up of that one intelligence — was like a 
second creation, for it gave significance and value to the prior 
creation. 

12. And is it for man to set any limits to the wisdom that has 
thus endowed him ? We might proceed to show that the man- 
ner in which the material is made to balance, yet subserve, the 
spiritual in his constitution, and in which the conditions of lib- 
erty and of government are harmonized, imply relations and 
adjustments unfathomably profound. But this would be to an- 

* Psalm xciv. 9, 



428 MA?f. 

ticipate the remaining sections ; and, as a proof of unlimited 
wisdom, it is unnecessary. The recognition of that wisdom — 
of a few of its more superficial traces — constitutes man's science. 
That science he never expects to complete. Every step in ad- 
vance is a protest against such an expectation, for it only 
affords him a more commanding view of the vast unknown. 
Every such step admonishes him also that his own mind is only 
as yet in process of development, for it appeals to hidden rela- 
tions, and puts him in possession of new powers. Let him wait 
till he has exhausted the works of God, before he thinks of 
assigning limits to His wisdom. " There is no searching of His 
understanding." And every act by which the mind recognizes, 
in its own adjustment to the universe, a manifestation of the 
Divine wisdom, reflects the mirrored glory of the whole on the 
mind of the Maker. 

Sect. m. — Goodness. 

1. When speaking of the animal dispensation as an illustra- 
tion of the Divine benevolence, we saw Goodness where before 
we beheld only Wisdom and Power, for we saw that both the 
productions of power and the arrangements of Wisdom had 
waited to answer an end in the service of Benevolence. In 
the human dispensation, this is not merely repeated, but ex- 
ceeded. For not only are the same special provisions for 
enjoyment to be found in man which we recognized in the ani- 
mal (and which we shall not here re-consider), some of these 
provisions are enlarged, and other and higher provisions are 
superadded. 

2. In the constitution of the first man, considered as a sinless 
being, we behold a creature whose every susceptibility and 
power tends to enjoyment. Regarded merely as a partaker of 
animal existence, the consciousness of life alone is the conscious- 
ness of enjoyment. Additional enjoyment was provided for him 
in the gratification of each of those appetites which relate to the 
support and continuance of life. As a percipient being, evei'y 
organ of sense was an avenue of distinct and additional grate- 
ful sensations. As a reflective and rational being, the mere 
exercise and expansion of his intellectual faculties would occa- 
sion him enjoyment: improvement itself would be pleasure. 
The emotions of novelty and curiosity, of anticipation and hope, 
of cheerfulness and love, are only other names for happiness ; 
and yet this is the only class of emotions of which unfallen man 



O 



THE ULTIMATE END. 429 

would be conscious. The consciousness of a power to will — 
of his doing what he did from choice — this was another and a 
deep source of enjoyment. And, then, the highest, the most 
exquisite of all, was the consciousness that he had done morally 
right, that he had acted in harmony with the objective and su- 
preme will. 

3. The constitution of man, regarded as successively existent, 
renders the goodness of the Creator more apparent still. How 
remarkable, for instance, is that provision by which the limita- 
tion and apparent defect of memory, owing to which, many 
things are forgotten, are made subservient to the more easy and 
])rompt exercise of the judgment, which would otherwise be 
confounded and oppressed by the bewildering details of the past. 
And that emotional provision, by which, besides the pleasure 
we feel in merely intending good to another, the object of our 
kind I'ntention feels pleasure in the mere knowledge of our in- 
tention ; this operating, further, as a motive to the fulfilment of 
the intention ; in which fulfilment, again, we experience plea- 
sure, and the object of our regard again experiences pleasure 
in being the actual recipient of our kindness ; while the fore- 
knowledge 01 this, again, impels us to the act. And in this 
way, the feeling of kindness not merely survives the act which 
it prompts us to perform : it is even strengthened by the act, 
and would feel a pleasure in immortalizing its objects.* And 
that remarkable arrangement by which the impulse of compas- 
sion is strong in proportion to the helplessness of the object, and 
help is rendered with a promptness which does not wait for the 
decisions of reason ; so that our instinctive nature is made to 
subserve our highest well-being. For all such instances, besides 
the preceding, accompanying, and resulting pleasure they yield 
as instinctive acts, are capable of yielding additional pleasure 
when conscience has pronounced them to be on the side of vir- 
tue. And then there is the power of habit, by which every 
voluntary course of conduct essential to our well-being becomes 
increasingly easy and pleasant. Who but must perceive and 
admire the beneficence of this provision, by which every suc- 
cessive hour in which the first man persevered in obedience to 
the command of his Maker, rendered his failure less and less 
likely ,*and his obedience more agreeable and consciously en- 
nobling ! 

4. The condition of innocent man answered, in beneficent 

^ Dr. Chalmers' Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i., c. 2. 



430 MAN. 

contrivance, to his constitution. He found himself the inhabi- 
tant of a place in which every object and arrangement had 
been Divinely appointed to minister to his happiness. Was 
the active employment of his powers essential to his enjoyment ? 
He had to gather the fruits which he needed, and " to keep the 
ground " which he occupied. It is by no means unusual for the 
sceptic to speak of man's appointment to labor as if the Bible 
had made it to originate in the primal curse, and then, having 
shown that labor is in reality a condition of our nature and a 
blessing, to exult as if he had convicted the Bible of inconsis- 
tency. Now, the only rest which the Bible promises even in 
Heaven, is rest from suffering, the only labor which it denounces 
as curse is toil, producing the " sweat of the brow" and the "sor- 
row" of the heart — a curse from which iha mass is, at this mo- 
ment, laboring to escape. But healthy bodily occupation was 
made a necessity and a duty in Paradise itselK Hence, too, 
the appointment, from the first, of a day of rest. And it is Avor- 
thy of remark and remembrance, that, in this respect, the Bible 
is alone ; that while the representations which are found in the 
writings of Hesiod, Plato, and the ancient classics generally, de- 
scribe the happy state as one of indolence and ease, or only of 
optional activity, the writings of Moses evince the superiority of 
their origin by representing labor as a condition of happiness, 
and a duty. 

In a similar manner, man's intellectual powers were called 
into easy activity by the office assigned to him of comparing, 
discriminating, and giving names to objects ; and his sense of 
obligation, by an easy law relating to his appetites and senses — 
a law requiring him, not to perform, but simply to omit the 
performance of a single action. And thus, by a threefold act, 
the hand of Goodness gave an impulse to his powers, physical, 
mental, and moral, and called the whole into pleasurable 
activity. 

5. Would it conduce to the happiness of a holy being to be 
made sensible of his dependence on his all-sufficient Creator, 
and of the kind care of the Creator to provide for his wants ? 
The creation of woman was calculated to answer this twofold 
end. The desire of man for a "help-meet" was, perhaps, one 
of the first of which he was conscious ; and to awaken this 
desire, was, probably, judging from the phraseology, one of the 
Divine designs, in bringing the animals in pairs into the pres- 
ence of Adam. The immediate production of woman, then, 
was calculated to deepen his sense of dependence and obliga- 



THE ULTIMATE END* 431 

tlon ; while the particular method of her formation which God 
was pleased to select was calculated " to give his newly-created 
children a lively sense of their reciprocal duties." 

6. Would it still more conduce to man's enjoyment that he 
should hold intercourse with his Maker? This must be regarded 
as the crown of the creature's happiness. And yet direct com- 
munion with his Maker appears to have been man's familiar 
privilege. If " he that walks with a wise man becomes wise," 
what must he become who walks with "the only wise God!" 
If the external creation was calculated to repfoduce itself, in a 
living paradise, within his bosom, what could be the effect, had 
it bi^en long continued, of his habitually coming into the felt 
presence of the Creator himself, but to be rapidly advanced in 
every intellectual and moral excellence ! Hence, also, " God 
blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it ; because that in it He 
had rested from all his work which God had created and made." 
Thus, from the beginning, "the sabbath was made for man;" 
and for what assignable object could it be made for man in para- 
dise, but ibr his progress in knowledge and holiness, by holding 
communion with God ? Indeed, the reason assigned for its con- 
secration implies this, as well as the statement that God sancii- 
Jled it — or set it apart from a common to a religious use ; and 
that He blessed it — or made it a source of peculiar advantage 
to man. For in what other way could God's cessation from the 
work of creation form a reason for the institution of the sabbath, 
except as its completion filled up that outline of his character 
which it was for his glory to display, and for man's highest ad- 
vantage to contemplate ? Thus, a rich objective provision was 
made answering to every part of man's subjective nature, and 
calculated to fill him with grateful admiration of the Divine 
goodness. 

7. Still further was this goodness displayed in the progressive- 
ness of its exercise. The work of creation had now paused, and 
Providence had commenced its reign ; henceforth the character 
of God was to be learned not merely from the adaptation of his 
works to man's constitution considered co-existently, but also 
from the manner in which they were effected and disclosed. 
Accordingly, we find his goodness exemplified in the manner 
in which, step by step. He was pleased to adapt his conduct to 
man's constitution, considered as successively existent. Having 
formed his creature in a locality of general adaptation, the Crea- 
tor then conducted him into a scene of special adaptation, as if 
to impress him from the first with a sense of his Maker's good- 



4S^ Miif. 

ness. There, the first day which dawned on him was a sabbath ; 
and the first being with whom he fotind himself in communion 
was his Divine Creator. The manner in which all the trees of 
the garden (with one exception) were given him to awaken and 
gratify his appetite, and to regale his senses ; the simple and 
easy manner in which his mind was first called into exercise, 
in naming the animals ; the natural manner in which his conse- 
quent sense of superiority was gratified, by being invested with 
an easy dominion over them; the mode of appealing to his 
social nature, and of then gratifying it by the creation of a help- 
meet for him ; and then the easiness of the command which 
appealed to his sense of duty ; — indeed, the whole train of cir- 
cumstances appears to have been arranged with the benevolent 
design of easily and successively developing the various parts 
of his constitution, and of enlarging his view, at each step, of 
the goodness of his Creator. 

The supposition that man was not merely potentially, but ac- 
tually, perfect, from the earliest moment of his creation, besides 
contravening the true theory of human nature, is out of harmony 
with the inspired narrative, and impairs our view of the Divine 
goodness. That his nature was potentially perfect, or capable 
of all perfection, we affirm, in effect, when we say that he was 
made in the Divine image. Besides which, being created with 
all his capacities in a state of mature readiness for exercise and 
development, and having nothing to unlearn, his progress would 
be distinguished by corresponding rapidity. But still that pro- 
gress, however rapid, implied successive steps — greater attain- 
ments to-day than yesterday, and, in consequence, preparation 
for greater still to-morrow. And the method employed by God 
to secure this progress exhibits Him in the relation of a wise 
paternal instructor aiming at once to engage the affections, and 
to improve the opening faculties of his child. In this light, the 
test of the creature's obedience (not to eat of a certain fruit) 
appears to be, what it really was — a first lesson in moral obli- 
gation — morality made easy. 

8. When showing, in a preceding chapter, that man's every 
movement is right or wrong in relation to that constitution of 
nature into which he has been introduced, his condition, viewed 
in connection with his want of experience, may possibly have 
awakened the idea of hardship. Now, the sufficient reply to 
this (if, indeed, it deserves or requires any) as far as the para- 
disiacal state is concerned, is, that his every movement there 
might have been regulated by a reference to the Divine will. 



THE ULTIMATE END. 433 

Judging from the instructions which were afforded to man, it is 
only reasonable to conclude that the longer his obedience con- 
tinued, lesson after lesson "would have been imparted and mul- 
tiplied on everything essential to his safety and enjoyment. 
Tlie goodness which left him not to discover what were whole- 
some fruits by leaving him to partake of unwholesome, but which 
surrounded him with such only as were "good for food," would 
have maintained consistency in every other respect. 

9. Animal pain and death, rightly considered, appear to be 
perfectly compatible w^ith Benevolence ; for they are only the 
necessary limitations of a progressive system.* But sinless 
man was to be exempted even from these. Not only was his 
sentient nature, like that of the animal world into which he had 
come, constructed for enjo}'ment, actually provided with the 
means of enjoyment, and designed to find existence synonymous 
with enjoyment, but, as the partaker of a higher nature, he was 
to know nothing even of the incidental evil, death. He was to 
live in the happy consciousness of an invulnerable and indis- 
soluble life. It imported not, whether, after a season of preter- 
natural security, he was to be translated bodily to a benigner 
stage of being ; or whether his pure spirit was so to assimilate 
its material frame to its own immortal nature, as to render all 
the laws and substances of the earth alike innocuous and even 
congenial to it. Every change around him told him to look 
only for good, for all the changes which preceded his coming 
had been made to minister to his advantage. While every 
change within him was to be a change from glory to glory. His 
path w^as to lie ever onwards, upwards, towards a future stored 
with unknown forms of good. Happy as he already was, his 
eye had not seen, nor his heart conceived, the blessedness which 
awaited him. 

10. Nor does the Divine benevolence suffer any abatement 
from the nature of man's probation. It was a covenant, not of 
"works," but of the richest grace. Specially defended from 
danger at every point except one, and that one the easiest and 
the least, man had merely to leave a single object untouched, 
on his way to a state where crowns of life were piled up, reach- 
ing from earth to heaven, awaiting himself and all his posterity. 
Infinite goodness alone could have made such an arrangement 
possible. 

11. "But man was made not only with the power of sinning,. 

* Pre- Adamite Earth, 180—184. 
37 



434 MAN. 

(this his moral freedom rendered unavoidable,) but with the 
Divine foresight that the possibility would be actualized." 
Granted. We believe that God was under no natural neces- 
sity for creating a free being such as man ; that man was made 
such as he was, therefore, because it pleased the Creator so to 
constitute him : that God was so pleased, for the attainment of 
an end infinitely honorable to himself; and that of that end 
He is infallibly certain. But if that end be worthy of Divine 
Benevolence, the foresight and permission of evil must be com- 
patible with that Benevolence also. Accordingly, we beheve 
that, while man's moral power makes the guilt of sinning ex- 
clusively his own, and while the Divine Being could have pro- 
tected man from evil at all points if He had aimed only at an 
inferior good, He permitted evil to enter only because it was 
incidental to a sublimer good. In other words, we believe that 
Infinite Benevolence would not have suffered man to abuse his 
freedom, supposing that in all other respects the system to 
which he belongs, and the ends to be attained by it, would 
have been equally good; that the foreseen evil, therefore, is 
permitted, not for its own sake, but for the sake of that greater 
good which the system makes possible ; and further, that, in 
relation to this entire system, the amount of evil permitted to 
exist is precisely that amount which can be made subservient 
to the greatest amount of good; and that the amount of the 
good would be reduced by any change in the amount of the 
evil, either more or less. While, in conducting the great 
scheme to its remotest issues, it will be seen that the power of 
man was always made the measure of his responsibility, and 
that no form of evil ever came into being for which that scheme 
did not contain the most benevolent provision.* 

12. Into such a scheme the new-made man was introduced. 
The world into which he came had long been one of the un- 
numbered residences of Goodness already. Nor could man 
have read the records of former animal creations, written on 
the mountains and in the valleys ; and then have heard of the 
hundreds of thousands of living species, and have known that 
the actual multiplication of some of them, prodigious as it is, 
is as nothing compared with their possible increase, without 
feeling that, subjectively, the Creative goodness can know no 
limitation; and that, objectively, He is all-sufiicient for re- 
plenishing alike a single planet, or ten thousand worlds, with 

* Supra, p. 413. 



O 



THE ULTI.AIATE END. 435 

sentient enjoyment, and for sustaining the whole for an age, or 
forever. As a 'proof of such all-sufficiency, then, marCs coming 
was unnecessary. And yet his capacity for enjoyment exceeds 
that of all the prior creations combined. As a sinless being, all 
causes of dread were unknown to him. He had a property 
in everything around him. He lived in conscious harmony and 
joyous fellowship with all the purposes of God. He could com- 
mit himself to the great laws and elements of nature as to an 
ark in which nothing but good could come to him. The enjoy- 
ment daily of even one sensation of pure happiness would have 
been much ; the unlimited enjoyment of one source or form of 
happiness, more ; but man's nature was a permanent constitu- 
tion for happiness, physical, intellectual, and moral, with the ex- 
ternal world studiously adjusted to his desires ; with the power 
of reaching to other worlds, and of commanding their resources ; 
and with the prospect of endless increase. Moving in the light 
of the Divine complacency, he radiated joy around him, and 
received in return the commending looks, and mute homage, of 
the creation. 

13. But rich and varied as were the manifestations of Good- 
ness to unfallen man, could he have been conscious of those 
which the family and society would develop, and those which 
the discoveries of successive ages would bring to light, with 
what a fulness of gratitude would he have exclaimed, " The 
whole earth is full of His goodness." Could he have known 
how nicely the productiveness of the soil on which he stood was 
calculated for the intellectual as well as the bodily w^nts of man 
— requiring labor, but not labor without leisure ; how liberally 
the earth was stored up to the surface with the fuel, the minerals, 
and the metals, on which the temporal welfare of his posterity 
would depend — with the provident savings of successive worlds, 
arranged and laid up in the only way in which they could be 
accessible to man ; how time would bring to light, and turn to 
account, the correspondences of earth with other planets, show- 
ing that the good of man was blended with the vast generalities 
of a universal system ; or could he have foreseen the provision 
made for infantine happiness, and have foretasted the stream of 
enjoyment which, through all generations, would be flowing 
through the parental heart, and issuing from the other relations 
of life, what an expanded view would it have given him of the 
benevolence of Him who is the Fountain whence all these 
streams descend ! But his views of the Divine beneficence were 
limited, at first, to such as his constitution and relations required ; 



436 MAH. 

and this limitation itself was an illustration of that beneficence. 
Nothing was wanting to his present enjoyment ; while before 
him lay a cloudless and unbounded prospect. 

Sect. IV. — Holiness, 

1. What are the conditions on which the conclusion, that the 
constitution and condition of the first man are calculated to 
illustrate the all-sufficiency of the Divine holiness, might be 
reasonably accepted ? There was a point in the flow of dura- 
tion, when the question first received an objective answer, 
whether or not the creation of a holy being, capable of moral 
government, was possible. A race of angelic beings formed the 
Divine reply. And when some of their order sinned, the Holi- 
ness which had radiated complacency upon them as long as they 
retained their moral excellence, now further vindicated its claims 
by flaming against them in acts of retributive justice. Neither 
those who retained their holiness, nor those who had lost it, 
probably, required any illustration additional to that which their 
own experience supplied, to convince them of the infinitude of 
the Divine holiness. 

2. But as if to place this fact beyond question. He created 
man — a being with a diff*erent constitution, and placed in a 
different condition — and yet designed to exhibit the same 
spiritual excellence. But was the first man formed for the 
manifestation of holiness ? Our first reply to this inquiry is, 
that even his body is evidently meant to be the ark of moral 
law. The Jewish tabernacle, built after a Divine model, was, 
in the very act of its dedication, lighted up with the Divine glory. 
What more could be necessary to denote that it was sacred to 
the Holy One of Israel, except that judgments should alight 
on any who dared to profane it ? In the case of the human 
structure, the proof that it was destined to the service of truth, 
and temperance, and chastity, and benevolence, is still stronger. 
Every violation of these moralities is an outrage which the 
very temple itself resents. "The stone crieth out from the 
wall." The fleshly shrine, protesting against its profanation, 
dissolves connection with the sacrilegious spirit, and hastens 
to rejoin those physical laws which cannot disobey their Ma- 
ker's will. 

3. Still more apparent is the rectitude of the Creator in the 
remarkable fact, that our instincts should have been made sub- 
servient to our virtue, and our self-love to our highest well- 



O 



THE ULTIMATE END. 437 

being. These instincts, such as anger, fear, and parental affec- 
tion, are possessed by animals in common with man. But as 
the animal is incapable of virtue, they can only be regarded, in 
its case, as so many special provisions, by which Divine benevo- 
lence secures the continuance and enjoyment of animal life. In 
the instance of man, however, besides increasing his enjoyment, 
and thus exhibiting the goodness of God, the very fact that they 
do not terminate on their immediate objects, but that they tend 
to subserve a moral purpose, speaks emphatically of a moral 
administration. The pity which prompts man to relieve dis- 
tress, leaves less for virtue to perform. The anger which, by 
kindling against injustice or evil solicitation, keeps both in check, 
leaves less for virtue to resist. Thus, these instinctive emo- 
tions " may at once lighten the tasks, and lessen the temptations 
of virtue." But these very actions, impulsively performed, are 
subsequently susceptible of moral approbation ; and thus, besides 
affecting his condition, they are carried forwards to his charac- 
ter. Impulse comes to the aid of principle. The prophet not 
merely lives in the den of lions, but is guarded by them. Or, 
like the animal forms which sustained the brazen laver in the 
temple, our instincts and impulses are brought into the very 
sanctuary of our nature, and subordinated to its holiest ends. 
Those pre-existing parts and passions which we share in com- 
mon with inferior beings, and which illustrate the power, and 
wisdom, and goodness of God, are here seen ministering to its 
moral excellence as means to an end ; and thus proclaiming that 
man is made for holiness. 

4. Ascending from the physical structure of man, and from 
his sensibilities, to his intellect, w^e find him made for appre- 
hending the eternal and irreversible nature of moral distinctions. 
Reason takes him into a region where immutability reigns. 
Here, right and wrong are seen in unchangeable hostility. 
Truth never becomes inexpedient; nor gratitude unnatural; 
nor obligation unsettled. Every principle is beheld on its way 
from one eternity to another ; or rather forms a part of the 
arch which spans both, and on which the Eternal himself is en- 
throned. 

5. The office of conscience renders the Divine rectitude still 
more apparent. Should we be ready to admit that we were 
under a moral administration, if we could see the throne of 
God, however dimly and distantly, and hear his voice, though 
only in a whisper, addressing us in the language of authority, 
and behold his smile or his frown following our every act ? By 

37* 



438 MAN. 

making conscience a part of our nature, arming it with author- 
ity over every other part, by enlisting all that authority on the 
side of righteousness, and by accompanying it with sanctions for 
the enforcement of its dictates, this truth is more emphatically 
proclaimed, for the whole of that tribunal is set up within the 
human breast. Every emotion of which our nature is capable, 
points, under the guidance of conscience, to a moral purpose. 
Every intellectual state is equally subject to its control ; for by 
influencing the will, it commands the attention, and thus indi- 
rectly affects the formation of opinion. And, as opinion be- 
comes embodied in conduct, all the authority of conscience is on 
the side of justice and truth, humanity and gratitude. It not 
only harmonizes with these principles, but is ever calling for 
them, denouncing everything opposed to them, and following it 
up with retribution. The whole man is given into its hand. It 
has a complete judicature of its own, and a heaven and a hell; 
and in this awful domain (even though he could be guaranteed 
against all infliction from without) the sentence. Thou hast vio- 
lated the infinite and immutable right, fills him with remorse. 
He " hath w^ronged his own soul." And in this self-executing 
law, which denounces the wrong, we read the holy character of 
the Lawgiver. 

6. Would it enhance our view of the holy excellence of the 
Creator, if it should appear that, besides the pleasure attending 
an act as virtuous, the very consciousness of the act itself should 
be made pleasui'eable ? Now, such is the fact. There is a 
happy serenity in the bare consciousness of good intentions. 
Enjoyment attends the very desire to diffuse enjoyment. In 
the act of proposing an exalted end, man feels himself lifted into 
a nobler region. The consciousness of light within generates 
around him an atmosphere of light. " Virtue is not merely en- 
joyed as right, and approved as useful, but relished as delicious. 
We are indebted for consciousness to the first, tt3 experience for 
the second, but the third is a physical arrangement, an instant 
enjoyment, ascribable only to the good pleasure of Him who in 
thus identifying holiness with happiness in man's constitution, 
was illustrating the excellence of his own character." And the 
fact to be remarked here is that " the more exclusively he aims 
at the virtue for its own sake, the less will he think of its actual 
enjoyment, and yet the greater will his actual enjoyment be." 
He is loved all the more for aiming only to be lovely. 

7. Another distinct corroboration of the Divine holiness is 
Hound in man's nature, considered as successively existent, or in 



O 



*rHE Ultimate end. 4S§ 

relation to the law of haUt. If, on examining the constitution 
of the first man, we had felt constrained to admire the rectitude 
of the Being who had even organized his material framework 
for virtue, who had enlisted his very instincts on the side of it, 
who had made its immutable obligations a truth of his reason, 
who urged him to it by a voice of authority in the centre of his 
being, and who had so formed him that the very conception of 
virtue should be sweet to him, would it have served to heighten 
our admiration to find that, by another law of his nature, every 
hoi}' act would ripen into a holy habit, and that the result 
would be the permanent establishment of a holy character? 
Would it have elevated our conception of the Divine holiness 
to find that the constitution of his creature provided that the 
accumulating consequences of all his acts should abide with 
him ; so that, on looking onwards in his moral history, it should 
be found that every successive moment of his obedience to the 
Divine will rendered the continuance of that obedience more 
and more easy and certain, and that every act of virtue made 
him more apt and vigorous in its service ? Now, such is the 
law of man's constitution. As if the Creator had been impa- 
tient to diminish man's liability to sin as rapidly as consistent 
with the freedom of his nature, by the law of habit He strength- 
ens and makes surer man's resistance to temptation, while He 
makes easier and surer the most difficult duties of virtue ; until, 
by repetition, man comes to perform them spontaneously, and as 
a happy moral necessity. Now, the contingent union of all 
these ultimate facts in man's constitution gives a multiple force 
to the conclusion that he was made for virtue, and for the mani- 
festation of a holy Creator. 

8. But do the subjective arrangements of man's constitution 
find their counterparts in the objective universe ? If they do 
not — if even one of them is unrecognized and unprovided for 
from without, so as to be left dormant or useless, the argument 
for the Divine holiness, derivable from man's objective relations, 
is so ftir impaired. On the other hand, if no such defect exists, 
but if every part of man's moral constitution has its appropriate 
sphere of exercise, and its ever-appealing objects — its Sinai 
and its probationary Eden — in the external universe, the dis- 
play of tliat holiness is augmented, w\ile power, and wisdom, 
and goodness are found to be made subservient to it. 

9. Now, in adverting to these correspondencies between the 
individual man, regarded as a moral being, and the universe of 
mind and matter, of which he stands the centre, we can, for the 



440 MAK. 

present, do little more than glance at some of those impressive 
illustrations which man's progressive history has brought to 
light. For example, we have spoken of his body as intended 
to be the shrine of a pure spirit ; and as obvious is it that the 
earth w^as meant to be the shrine of such a body. Let his ma- 
terial organization be perverted into " instruments of unright- 
eousness," and nature itself proclaims against him. He finds 
that he is at cross purposes wdth a system which steadily ad- 
vances to its end, despite his folly and his guilt, and which 
thwarts and threatens him at every step. Ever and anon, some 
natural phenomenon, or ^aw^, comes forth at the awful call of 
justice, and stands like an angry angel in his path. 

10. We have also found that even the instinctive and invol- 
untary part of our nature is engaged on the side of virtue. 
And, in external correspondence, who does not know the influ- 
ence of shame, in withholding from impurity ; of anger, in in- 
timidating injustice ; of pity, in alleviating suffering ; and of a 
desire for the good opinion of others, in leading to a course of 
conduct worthy of that opinion? Further; is man made to 
conceive of the true and the right as immutable ? He cannot 
represent this ultimate fact to his mind apart from an august 
objective Personality ever executing the laws of right. Every 
conviction of responsibility, as it comes up from the depths of 
his moral being, points with unwavering finger to the invisible 
tribunal, (too spiritual and awful to be seen,) and to the endless 
future, as stored with the instruments and agents of justice. 

11. Has conscience its laws within the breast? Society has 
transcribed them on its tables, and God has repeated them from 
his throne. Man is constantly moving in the presence of ob- 
jects which are ever ready to memorialize his conscience, and 
to maintain it in activity. If it accuse him, all nature seems to 
enter into a conspiracy with it to destroy his peace. If it ap- 
prove, all nature joins it in a chorus of praise. The sanctions 
of the invisible power within are responded to, and ratified by 
the course of external events ; and man's happiness or misery 
is found to be referable incomparably less to his condition than 
to his character. 

12. Is there a pleasure or a pain in the very consciousness 
of moral quah ties? How admirably is this arrangement re- 
sponded to in the reciprocal influences of mind and mind. We 
have seen that the bare intention of good is pleasant to the con- 
scious subject of it ; but so it is also to the object of it as soon 
as he is made aware of the intention. In the performance of 



O 



TME tJLTlMAtE EnC» 441 

the intended act, the pleasute is repeated, and so it is, also, in 
the reception of it. The knowledge of this, again, is delightful, 
on the one hand, and the exercise of gratitude delightful on the 
other. But equally painful is the reciprocation of the malevo- 
lent affections. So that the effect of this arrangement is greatly 
to increase the pleasures of virtue, and to aggravate the mise- 
ries of vice. And that which is to be especially remarked is, 
that these pleasures and pains may be quite independent of ex- 
ternal acts. There is no commensurability between man and 
a material gift. Its value consists in the intention ; for in that 
I give a portion of myself; and, in designing evil, I aim at a 
collision of spirits. And thus, apart from all gross and visible 
reciprocations, a heaven of right intentions is possible to the 
virtuous, and a hell of evil intentions to the vicious, even on 
earth. 

13. In the law of habit, we recognized a provision for man's 
constant progress in holiness. And what vast eternal scope for 
the beneficial operation of this law would have existed for un- 
fallen man in the family ; in the arrangement by which the 
susceptibilities of youth would have been all placed under the 
formative and ennobling influence of confirmed excellence ! 
The tendency of man's earliest acts would have been towards 
habits of excellence ; while each generation might have started 
from a loftier point. Even as it is, the avowed tendency of 
education is in this direction, however ignorantly and faultily 
it may be conducted ; and to each age is given the opportunity 
of rearing a comparatively virtuous generation. But this is to 
anticipate. 

14. These are some of the great and simple phenomena of 
our moral constitution and condition, by which God not merely 
discloses his love for virtue, and, therefore, the holiness of his 
character, but the boundless resources of his holiness. Others, 
indeed, might easily be named. There is that endowment, for 
example, by which w^e perceive the beautiful, and admire the 
sublime, in connection with that law by which we associate all 
that is beautiful and sublime in material nature with all that is 
attractive and venerable in virtue. Everything in nature 
answers to a moral quality ; is an externization of virtue. The 
poet needs not put the shell to his ear in order to hear its 
music; and sees further into celestial space without the tele- 
scope tlian with it. And so, for unfallen man, all the sounds of 
earth were set to the music of virtue ; and earth itself was a 
holy place, in which there was no veil to conceal the present 



442 MAN. 

Grod. And still, all its symbols, rightly interpreted, express and 
reinforce the hopes of the good, or call forth and exasperate the 
fears of the wicked. 

15. Further ; we might adduce the fact that truth and trust, 
answering to each other, are essential to the well-being, and 
even to the existence, of society ; and that, on the largest scale, 
there is an inseparable connection between the morality of a 
community and its substantial happiness. All sin is selfish ; 
but man is placed in such relation to his fellows, that he cannot 
indulge in selfishness without wounding the most sensitive part 
of their nature, and arming them all against him. Society 
itself is a system of checks against it; a standing protest in 
behalf of sympathy and benevolence. And thus morality and 
happiness, virtue and utility, are placed, by God, in harmony 
with each other. Virtue (as it has been well expressed) is not 
right because it is useful ; but God hath made it useful because 
it is right. He hath so constructed both the system of human- 
ity, and the system of external nature, that, in effect and his- 
torical fulfilment, the greatest virtue and the greatest happiness 
are at one. 

16. Now, as a mere proof of the holiness of the Creator, here 
is evidence in superfluity. Assuming, for a moment, that this 
perfection of the Deity were in question prior to the creation 
of the first man, no rational being could have had these pheno- 
mena expounded to him without feeling that, if there is any 
arguing from effect to cause, the Maker of such a creature must 
be holy. Not even one of these moral elements could have 
been consistently inserted into the human constitution by a 
Being in love with evil. The union of any two of them would 
have indicated design ; and if that design was not to produce 
a creature who should hate his Creator, that Creator must be 
holy. What, then, could the feeling have been when a third 
and a fourth of these phenomena came into view, but a pro- 
found conviction that God was expounding and illustrating the 
resplendent holiness of his own perfect nature ; and when we 
saw that in the complicated framework of the human being 
there was no part irrelevant or neutral ; that every power and 
property consented to, and cried out for holiness as its ultimate 
want ; and that this being was placed amidst the play of forces 
and influences from without, leading to the same high result, 
we must have felt, long before the investigation ended, that the 
Maker of such a being could never be at a loss for means to 
illustrate his holiness. Every part of man's nature, as we have 



O 



THE ULTIMATE EKD. 443 

seen,* abounds with materials for theories of virtue. So coin- 
cident is morahty and happiness, that one insists that the good 
of self is the only aim of virtue. So graceful and majestic is 
virtue, that a second regards it as an object of taste. No, says 
a third, it is based on the emotions, which all vibrate to it. 
Virtue, affirms another, is its own reward ; the bare conscious- 
ness of it is happiness. The foundation of all morality, adds 
another, is the right of God to the obedience of his creatures. 
No, it is added, the will of God is only the rule of man's duty ; 
its foundation rests on that eternal and immutable excellence 
of which the Divine character is the sum ; for reason tells me 
that rectitude has a substantive, existence, anterior to all law. 
The inference is obvious : so temple-like is man's nature, that 
to fix attention on any one part of it exclusively, is to arrive at 
the conclusion that such part- can be no other than " the holy 
of holies." 

17. Thus was answered the great question, whether or not, 
in this part of the universe, as well as elsewhere, God could 
make a creature in his own image. Many, indeed, of man's 
moral tendencies and endowments to which we have adverted, 
depended for development on the progress of events. But He 
who had made man knew that they were all deposited in his 
nature, or made possible to it, as the counterparts of His own 
excellence. God is knowable, and man was constituted to know 
him — to read his character in his works, regarding them as 
shadows of the great substance, symbols of the Divine Idea, 
means of intercourse between the Infinite mind and the finite. 
God is infinitely excellent, and man was made capable of loving 
Him supremely. After taking all created excellence to his 
heart, and lavishing his affections on it, he would still have 
affection to spare, capacities unoccupied, boundless love unem- 
ployed. And the loftiest height of human perfection would 
only furnish him with a point from which to soar away in quest 
of Him who challenges all the love of which he is capable. 
The will of God, as the expression of his character, is the 
standard of all excellence, so that nothing can be right, nor an- 
swer the end of its creation, nor any other desirable end, except 
in so far as it harmonizes with that standard ; and man was 
made capable of willing to be so conformed to it, of choosing it 
as his highest good, of even aspiring to hve for the very same e"hd 
as that for which God himself hves and reigns, for the manifes- 
tation of His glory. 

* Supra, p. 319. 



444 MAM. 

18. We say not, indeed, that there is no property or perfec- 
tion in God which has not its counterpart in man. Even that 
■which we do represent and know of the Deity is imperfect. We 
see it through a glass, darkly. The infinite resists the absolute 
intuition of the finite. How different from ours must that 
power be which wills effects more easily than we speak of them ; 
and that knowledge in which there is no induction, no emblem, 
no phenomenon, but which penetrates and possesses the essences 
of things ; and that freedom which rests immutably on an im- 
mutable judgment ! And our knowledge of God is incomplete. 
Properties and attributes exist in Him of which we have no 
conception. Man occupies his own peculiar point of view ; 
and the angel, his. Neither can pass from his own sphere, and 
appropriate the views or invade the conditions of the other. 
And even if orders of intelligences exist by myriads, and one 
reason pervade them all, the peculiar conditions of each would 
impart a corresponding peculiarity to the knowledge which 
each possesses of the Godhead, and leave them all penetrated 
with the conviction that what they know of Him is as nothing 
compared with what remains to be known of Him ; that He can 
never come forth from the eternity which He inhabits so as to 
bring Himself within created limits ; and that as to any compre- 
hension of His essence, or of His mode of being, the whole 
created universe, including themselves, is only " an altar with 
this inscription, To the unknown God." 

Man's great intellectual prerogative consists in being able to 
appreljend the limits of his resemblance, and to look from those 
limits into the ocean beyond. He is constituted to feel that 
though properties belong to the Divine nature of which, in the 
present state, he can have no conception, there can be no excel- 
lence in himself of which the counterpart does not exist in God. 
But by a rebound of the mind from all the limits and conditions 
of his own nature, he thinks of the same excellences in God as 
infinitely superior., Intuitively he glances from the shadow- 
profile to the bright Original. Attributes which he can name 
as they exist in himself, are nameless as they exist in God, and 
can only be spoken of as mfinite, mmutable, mcomprehen- 
sible. 

19. But now, when the holiness of God had received this 
new illustration in the creation of man, it remained to be seen 
whether or not his probation could be reconciled with the in- 
terests of righteousness. To this inquiry, the Divine Being 
replied by an arrangement which not merely solved the prob- 



THE ULTIMATE END. 445 

lem whether or not man could be so tried, but which made the 
trial itself subserve His righteous design. It showed that such 
trial might be good in itself as well as in its results. This, 
indeed, is a triumph of a kind repeated by the Creator in 
every part of the human constitution, for we see Him not mere- 
ly surmounting ditficulty, but employing it, converting appa- 
rent obstacles into actual facilities for the attainment of his 
ends. Thus, can matter and spirit co-exist in the same being. 
He not only aflirms the possibility in the creation of man, but ac- 
tually makes the body the means of the mind's activity, and the 
occasion of its development. Can He reach the mind of man 
through external nature, can spirit speidv to spirit through mere 
mechanism ; will not a material medium obstruct and make imv 
possible such intercourse ? He so constitutes man, that the ma- 
terial actually tells him of the spiritual, aad, in its higher and 
invisible forms, becomes an emblem of it. Nature itself awa"- 
kens in hini conceptions of excellence which God alone can sat- 
isfy. By suggesting kinds and degrees of perfection which it 
cannot exhibit, it points him beyond itself. This is its higl'iest 
function, to make the mind feel its own superiority to all out- 
ward things, even to those which come direct from: the Creator, 
and th)is to awaken in the consciousness of its connatu rain ess 
with Him. Can He convey to the finite id^as of the infinite ? 
He creates a being capable of rising from the feeling of his own 
identity to the conception of the indivisible and the immutable, 
and for whom the limited presupposes the unlimited. Can he 
combine freedom with necessity, mechanism and causality ? In 
the constitution of man, He has not merely overcome the diffi- 
culty, but has turned it to the highest account, for, in the gov- 
ernment of himself, man augments his liberty in the very act 
of asserting it, and in subordinating his own material organiza- 
tion, he takes an acknowledgment from all external nature of 
his prerogative over it. 

Having thus illustrated the fulness of its resources, by con- 
verting apparent hindrances into helps, the Divine sufficiency 
proceeded to show that man's probationary trial might be not 
merely reconcilable with rectitude, but promotive of its inter- 
ests. It was of a kind to teach man the subordination of his 
whole nature to his conscience, and of his conscience to God. 
It appealed to; his appetite, for the fruit of " the tree was good 
for ibod ;" and to the sense, for it was " pleasant to the eyes ;'* 
and to the intellect, for it was " the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil ;" and, therefore, to the emotions ; for it was a 
38 



446 



MAN. 



tree to- he " desired to make one wise ; " and to the will, for the 
very command not to partake, implied the power of man, as a 
free agent, to partake if he w^ould ; and then the same com- 
mand, by signifying that it was the will of God for him to re- 
frain, denoted that every other part of his nature was to be sub- 
rrdinated to his sense of duty, and his sense of duty to receive 
its dictates from the will of God, however that will might be 
made known. Both the felt supremacy of his conscience within, 
and the law from without which thus appealed to it, solemnly 
apprised him that, ultimately, he was constructed for moral gov- 
ernment, that he was one entire constitution for holiness. And 
we have seen, also, that man's probationary danger was reduced 
to a single point ; that while eternal consequences urged him to 
stand, his liability to fall was minified to the utmost; — an ar- 
rangement, this, which still further distinctly announced the 
Divine jealousy for the interests of holiness, and imphed that 
even this solitary avenue for the possible entrance of evil should 
itself be closed up, if those interests could be equally attained 
without it. Thus, the very nature of man's trial was calculated 
immeasurably to deepen his conviction of the Divine holiness, 
and to enlarge his views of its resources. 

20. But what if even man's actual sin should be the occasion 
of placing the righteousness of God in a still stronger light, — 
this would seem to leave nothing further necessary, or even pos- 
sible, in proof of the all-suificiency of his holy government! 
We have seen that this proof was not wanting. With man's 
first moment of conscious guilt commenced a process of self- 
punishment; for that very consciousness involved suffering. 
Even before his doom was formally pronounced, nature itself 
had assumed a look of judicial severity, and had found a voice 
to say, " Let there be no peace to the wicked." The external 
sentence only interpreted man's fears, and ratified his self-pro- 
nounced condemnation. Now, that his first sin should be the 
means of arming the best part of his own nature against him ; 
that the violation of holiness should be the occasion of calling 
into existence a whole order of emotions entirely unknown to 
him before — shame, compunction, and remorse — yet all of 
them capable of serving him as auxiliaries in the attainment of 
a higher order of holiness ; that the penal flame self-kindled 
within him should have brought out and made legible new char- 
acters of law before hidden from his consciousness ; that his 
very first act of self-judgment should be responded to from 
without, as if " the vast pyre of the last judgment,, already kin- 



THE ULTIMATE END. 447 

died in an unknown distance, were darting and alighting in 
flashes upon the face of his soul ; " in a word, that his first act 
of transgression should be the occasion of raising his concep- 
tion of the Divine holiness to the highest point which it had yet 
attained, was an arrangement calculated to remove all limit from 
his views of the resources of the Divine government. 

21. Up to the moment of the fall, everything in the constitution 
and history of man was illustrative of the benevolence of God. 
" The earth was full of his goodness ; " and man was heir of 
the whole. In proportion, then, to the strength of the argu- 
ment for the Divine goodness, arising from the affluence of 
man's means of happiness, was the strength of the argument 
for the Divine holiness arising from man's forfeiture of the whole, 
by sin. If the former demonstrated the fulness of God's love 
for happiness, the latter proved that his love of holiness is 
greater still. If the sufficiency of Goodness appeared in the 
fact that all the products of Power and Wisdom ministered to 
its ends, what shall we say to the all-sufficiency of Holiness 
when we behold Goodness itself surrender all its agents and 
instruments to be employed in vindication of its awful claims ! 
What must be the enormity of sin in the Divine estimation, 
and what the terrible importance of the sinner, when his first 
violation places hira in a hostile relation to the universe ! What 
must be the sublimity of that moral order which man had dis- 
turbed, when the order of universal nature was made to give 
way, and God himself descended, to its vindication ! And how 
can a Being, to whom all things offer themselves as instruments, 
and in whose service even obstacles become agents, be sup- 
posed to be less than all-sufficient in the accomplishment of his 
holy ends ! 

22. We have remarked already that the unfallen angels may 
have been previously convinced of the boundless resources of 
Holiness by the history of their own race. What the moral 
character of God might prove to be was a question (if we can 
suppose there ever was a moment when it yet remained to be 
disclosed to them) of the profoundest interest. That He in- 
habited eternity, they knew ; for had there ever been a period 
when he was not, He would not now have been ; but had He 
filled the past eternity with evil or with good ? That He was 
the High and Lofty One, they knew ; and this gave an infinite 
importance to the question, what will be the character of his 
government ? will it be a dominion of law or of force ? and, if 
of law, what will be its nature ? what will be punished ? what 



448 MAN. 

rewarded? Tell us (they might have anxiously exclaimed) 
what have we to expect ? Eternity is before us ; what awaits 
us in that boundless future ? O, that we knew the character 
of God ; that we might at least conjecture what he has stored 
up for us there ! 

But even supposing that there was ever a moment when this 
vast disclosure remained to be made to them, it could not have 
been for more than a moment. They had only to look within, 
in order to perceive that they themselves were made for holi- 
ness. They had only to study the manifestations of his charac- 
ter, in order to see that holiness sums up all his attributes ; that 
He loves holiness for itself; that He has nothing to hope, and 
yet He is holy — nothing to fear, and yet He is holy ; that He 
and holiness are one. They had only — tremendous experi- 
ment 1 — ' they had only to sin ; and all the order of nature was 
thrown into confusion, the universe armed to resist the infrac- 
tion, and Justice flamed forth in a fire never t») be quenched. 
Where can such holiness dwell, when even the heavens are not 
clean in its sight ! Who shall dwell with it, when even his 
angels are charged with folly ! when the only condition on 
which even his holiest creatures are allowed to dwell with Him 
is — (he has even made it a law of their nature) — that they 
shall never remain for a moment at a stand in holiness, but be 
always advancing to higher and higher degrees. And when 
they begin to praise his holiness, they feel as if they could 
never satisfy themselves with the adoring exclamation, " Holy, 
Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty !" And when He calls 
them nearer to his throne, they can see but one sight — that 
** He is glorious in holiness !" And when He calls them nearer 
still, a single look overpowers them, " and the wing which has 
taken them there veils their faces as they fall prostrate before 
Him !" 

They were well prepared, therefore, to look on this new dis- 
play of holiness in. the opening history of man. It was a 
recapitulation of their own history, with sublime additions. 
The moral well-being of a race was involved. But both sys- 
tems were seen to be under one administration. Law took a 
wider range. In man's painful consciousness of guilt, every 
part of his nature, every member of his race, virtually joined 
them in the adoring strain, " Who shall not fear thee, Lord, 
and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for thy judg- 
ments are made manifest." 

^3. For anything we know to the contrary, this may be one 



O 



THE ULTIMATE END. 449 

of the highest proofs of the Divine all-sufficiency — the crown- 
ing proof — to be able not only to conduct a single process of 
manifestation — not only to conduct more than one separately, 
but to be able to allow them to blend at a certain point ; to 
show them in harmony with each other, and with loftier issues 
still beyond. Let it be only imagined what confusion would 
ensue in the planetary system, were its present arrangement to 
be disturbed by the admission of some new astronomical body, 
however small. Who can foresee the multiplied adjustments, 
and the complicated balancings necessary, in order to restore 
the system to harmony ! What then shall we say of the new 
combinations, infinitely multiplied, necessary to harmonize two 
distinct processes of Divine manifestation ; and what a sublime 
view does it afford of the all-sufficiency of the Being who is 
able to effect it ! 

In the wide realms of the Divine government, indeed, nume- 
rous other orders of accountable beings, besides angels and men, 
may exist, or may hereafter be created, and may exhibit an 
ascending scale of races, in corresponding stages of excellence. 
Or, as the nebulous masses are conjectured to be in every stage 
of formation, so every perfection of the Divine character may 
be seen somewhere in every phase and stage of manifestation. 
And it may constitute an important element in the happiness of 
the blessed, and be employed as the grand means of securing 
their stability in holiness, to be admitted to behold the confluence 
of all these stupendous processes — to be placed at a point where 
the moral influences of all worlds are concentrated, and act on 
them together. 

24. It says much for the amplitude of the Divine resources 
that they should not only awaken such conjectures, but justify 
them. Or, if the conjectural character of such views are ob- 
jected to, it says still more for those resources that they justify 
the conviction that our loftiest flight of conjecture falls immea- 
surably below the stupendous reality, and will hereafter be 
found to have left us settled near the base. Without, therefore, 
re-opening the question of the Divine permission of evil, we 
must admit with Leibnitz, in the grand passage which closes 
the first part of his Theodicee^ that " those attempts of our reason 
in which there is no necessity for absolutely confining ourselves 
to certain hypotheses, only sei-ve to make us conceive that there 
may be a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of God; and 
that all the evils we see, and all the difficulties we suggest to 
ourselves, ought not to prevent our believing that there is 

38* 



450 MAN. 

nothing so exalted as the wisdom of God, nothing so just as 
his judgments, nothing so pure as his hohness, and nothing 
more immense than his goodness." And if such are even our 
assured convictions, what must theirs be, who, having emerged 
into unclouded light, are no longer left to conjecture, but 
directly look on a thousand actual ways of justifying the 
Divine conduct, each brightening under their gaze into a new 
occasion of awful admiration. Whatever mystery, in angelic 
eyes, may have attended the fresh incursion of evil in the fall 
of man, doubtless their own experience taught them to expect 
that Holiness would take occasion from it to clothe itself in new 
glories : that Evil itself would ultimately be vanquished and led 
in triumph through the universe, or that its existence would make 
possible a height of excellence, and a fulness of enjoyment, other- 
wise unattainable ; and that, in either case, the end would be 
attained in a manner still further illustrative of the all-suffi- 
ciency of the Blessed God. 

25. But man must wait for the full solution ; and well he 
may. Even as a physical being, he is momently enjoying the 
results of material laws and influences, which came into activity 
" a limited eternity " before he himself was called into existence ; 
and which yet did not find their highest ends until he came. 
As an intellectual being, he finds himself the inhabitant of a 
material system, which is itself subject to secular perturba- 
tions — deviations of orbit which go on increasing for a course 
of ages before they attain their maximum, and begin to return. 
But if all such variations of the system are ultimately corrected 
by its own laws, may he not hope that provision is made for 
correcting the more fearful disorders of the moral economy? 
And if the restoration of the material derangements requires 
enormous periods, (some of them are going on still in the same 
direction in which they were at the commencement of historic 
time,) surely an equal extent of duration, at least, may be con- 
ceded for the vindication of laws dating from eternity. If each 
oscillation of the celestial mechanism requires a period, in the 
presence of whose vastness and regularity the turbulence of 
human passion stands rebuked and subsides, how patient and 
confident of the results should man feel in the presence of the 
Infinite Patience — the Eternal himself — who has the whole 
extent of duration to work in ! As an accountable being, the 
mystery of evil is one of man's own creation ; he may well 
await the justification of that plan which only made it possible, 
since he himself has made it actual ; and rejoice in the thought 



O 



THE ULTIMATE END. 451 

that, in projx)rtion to the length of the time which the process 
requires, will be the magnitude of the results accruing to the 
interests of holiness. As the head of a race destined to exist 
generation after generation, what if the first man could have 
caught glimpses of the manner in which Law would retrieve its 
honors, and Holiness embody itself, and Humanity be more 
than restored, in the person of the Son of man, and the image 
of God gloriously reappear in a number which no one can num- 
ber ; surely the view must have made him feel that no plan 
was deserving of less than adoration which included such pros- 
pects, no time to be deemed slow which was occupied in work- 
ing out their realization. And what if, as an heir of immor- 
tality, he could have foreseen that all that number were destined 
to share the inheritance with him ; and, more than this — im- 
mortality with constant progression — progression in excellence, 
progression in happiness, progression for ever ; the mind ever 
augmenting its stores of enjoyment, and enlarging only to aug- 
ment them more ; ever ascending, and attaining the loftiest 
throne it had previously beheld, only to see others loftier still, 
and to ascend to them ; in a word, all the resources of God 
thrown open, and an infinity of duration in which to enjoy them 
— he could only have cast himself unreservedly on those re- 
sources, and have felt that he was reposing on All-sufficiency. 
But this is to forestall. 

26. By the creation of man, the earth itself may be said to 
have been transfigured, for its new inhabitant consciously radi- 
ated the Divine image. In its constitution, dominion, and far- 
reaching relations, he stood forth the embodiment of a Divine 
idea — the " Type of him that was to come." His probation 
raised the earth into a scene of moral government. Sinai 
itself was anticipated, and even surpassed, in him ; for his con- 
stitution was a living court of Divine judicature. His tempta- 
tion announced that he had joined the solemn march of events 
at a period when the great conflict between good and evil had 
already begun, and that, as a moral agent, he could not but 
take part in it. His first sin — by which the crown fell from 
the head of creation — may be regarded as a foreshadowing for 
all time of the kind of contest which he would be likely to wage : 
presuming on his sufficiency for himself, he brought his will 
into collision with the Supreme will. And the first great lesson 
taught him by experience, (the lesson already deposited in the 
archives of angelic experience,) that the well-being of the 
creature lies in obedience and dependence, may be regarded as 



452 MAI?. 

a prophecy of tlie moral of man's entire history. There can, 
indeed, be no second fall of man ; for never again can there be 
a first man, insulated from all the influences of his race, jet 
representatively related to them all. Probation, in this sense, 
can never be repeated. The first stage of man's experimental 
history is over — over for the race ; but not, therefore, is his 
career to cease. His nature, unlike that of any of the races 
which have here preceded him, admits of a prolonged process 
of development ; and, from this point, a new stage of his event- 
ful history is to begin, and a new aspect of the Divine character 
to be disclosed. And the spirit of the first sin, we repeat, will 
be found reappearing in every stage of the ever-deepening pro- 
cess, and the accompanying lesson of his dependence will be 
heard " waxing louder and louder." Meantime, the first great 
crisis has arrived. By aiming at self-sufiiciency, man has ren- 
dered himself more dependent than ever. His self-apotheosis has 
involved his degradation. Aspiring to raise himself superior to 
Law, he has left himself no resource but Mercy. And we know 
the manner in which the Divine All-sufl&ciency was pleased to 
meet the greatness of the occasion. 



O 



453 



NOTE 



ON THE ORDER OF THE ORIGESTATION OF MATTER 
I AND mND. 



Reference is made in the preceding pages to the relations 
probable sustained by the angelic order to the human economy. 
On this subject, two of the reviewers of the " Pre-Adamlte Earth" 
amicably inferred, that the principles there propouniTed would 
involve the conclusion that, in the ascending order of the Divine 
procedure, the creation of the material universe preceded the crea- 
tion of spiritual beings, and that man, as coming after the angelic 
order, in some sense transcends it. 

Both of these propositions I believe, (though the latter view 
does not necessarily follow, from anything which I had there 
stated ;) and in an article which appeared in the Biblical Review^ 
for January, 1848, I stated some of the scriptural grounds for my 
belief. The arguments which were adduced in that article, in 
support of the former of these views, I here repeat ; but with this 
precautionary remark, that their reception or their rejection does 
not affect the truth and applicability of any of the principles of 
this book to the human economy. My reasons for not here insist- 
ing on the latter of the two propositions — namely, the inferiority 
of the angelic constitution and destination as compared with those 
of man — are, that the discussion would undesirably swell the size 
of this volume ; that it will be more in place in that stage of. this 
series in which we shall treat of the Christian revelations ; and 
that the truth or falsehood of the view still less affects the validity 
of anything advanced in the preceding pages, than even the charac- 
ter of the former proposition does. All that our principles appear 
to require is, that, whatever the rank of the angelic order may be, 
the process of the Divine manifestation to it observe the same 



454 KOMB. 

order as It does to man. This conceded, we can easily conceive 
that the period of their creation did not fall Into any of the inter- 
vals of the earthly process, and that their constitution may so far 
differ from man's as to render a comparison of the two exceed- 
ingly difficult ; and yet that the song of their history will ulti- 
mately symphonize with his, though his will have notes beyond 
their reach. 

With these cautionary observations, I proceed to illustrate the 
proposition, that the creation of matter preceded the production 
of mind. The general opinion Is, I presume, that angels were 
created before the earth existed ; and that this is equivalent to 
saying that mind was created before matter. Now, that angels 
existed before man, is, I believe a truth inferable from revelation. 
And it is easy to infer, further, that they existed prior to the last 
formation of the earth, as a habitation for man. But to infer from 
this that they existed prior to the^ original creation of the matter 
of which the earth Is formed, Is a far different conclusion, and one, 
not only unwarranted, but, as I believe, directly negatived by the 
word of God. 

1. For, first, if, as we believe, there is but one purely spiritual 
and uncompounded being — the Father of spirits himself; and if, 
therefore, the angels are Invested with a material vehicle of some 
kind, however ethereal,* analogy would lead us to infer that the 
vehicle was prior to and prepared for the reception of the spirit 
which was to actuate it. " Flesh and blood, Indeed, cannot inherit 
the kingdom of God." But " there is a natural (or psychical) 
body, and there Is a spiritual body ;f the one requiring animal 
nourishment and repose — the other superior to such conditions. 
And the Apostle argues, that, as the organizations of earth differ 
from one another, so also the heavenly bodies exhibit a gradation 
of differences ; leaving It to be inferred that there Is a spirit-body 
as suited to the conditions of heaven as the soul-body is to the 
conditions of earth.J Now, supposing an analogy to have existed 
between the order of the creation of the soul-body for Adam and 
of the splrlt-body for angels, the creation of their material vehicle 



* Some, indeed, infer that they are purely spiritual because they are called " minis- 
tering TTVevfiara, spirits." But " there is a spiritual body." The phrase only proves 
that they are not grossly material and organized as we now are, but that they inhabit 
vehicles as ethereal as our bodies will be when we shall be "like unto the angels" — 
when that which " is sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption," The reason- 
ing genei-ally employed to prove that angels are absolutely bodiless would prove that 
the saints will be so likewise, even after the resurrection. 

t 1 Cor. XV. 44. 

t See Calvin on this verse, and Billroth, Bib. Cab. xxiii. p. 110. 



O 



NOTE. 455 

must be supposed to have been prior to that of the indwelling 
spirit. 

2. If, as we believe, heaven is a place, as vrell as a state, the 
preparation of the place must have taken precedence of the crea- 
tion of its occupants ; just as the garden of Eden was prepared 
for the coming of man. And though this would not prove that 
the substance of our planetary system preceded the creation of 
their " heavenly places," it would prove all that we are now in- 
sisting on — namely, that, taking the universe as a whole, matter, 
and not mind, was the first production of Omnipotence ; that it ia 
as true that the mansions of the angels were prepared for their 
inhabitants as it is that the existence of the earth preceded the 
creation of man. 

3. Still more apparent will this view become if it be remem- 
bered that there is no reason whatever to believe that their present 
abode has been always their residence, any more than there is 
that the present will be always the residence of man. Their pro- 
bationary abode may have been planetary, similar to ours. To 
infer that because the Bible speaks of them as being at present 
inhabitants of heaven, therefore they have never inhabited any 
other world, is to reach a conclusion without premises. They 
" kept not their first estate" — " they left their habitation." So, 
also, did our first parents ; and yet, who infers from this that 
Eden was in heaven ? Theology would seem to require that the 
place of reward should be somewhat different from the place of 
trial, and analogy sanctions the supposition. If, then, the " first 
habitation" of the angels were analogous to our own, like the earth 
it was doubtless prepared for their arrival. 

4. The Bible opens with the sublime affirmation that the first 
act of creation was the origination of the material universe : " In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In the 
appendix to the " Pre-Adamite Earth," it was shown that this 
language denotes the proper origination of the matter of the visi- 
ble universe. It is now proposed to show that this verse distinctly 
affirms that the origination of matter was the first act of creation. 
This verse could not have been intended merely to answer the 
question, "Were the heavens and the earth created?" in opposi- 
tion to the hypothesis of their eternity ; nor the question, " Who 
was their Creator ?" in opposition to the " lords many and gods 
many" of heathen mythology. For then, apparently, the sufficient 
answer would have been, " God created the heavens and the 
earth ■" the first word, " God," would have answered the first 
question ; and the second word, " created," would have answered 



456 Notfii 

the second question. The phrase, " in the beginning," would 
have been superfluous. But if we ask also the question, " What 
was the first production of Almighty power ?" this part of the 
verse is a direct reply to the inquiry ; for it declares that, " in the 
beginning," before God created anything else. He created the 
heavens and the earth. 

With this vieAv agrees the rendering of the Arabic version, 
Primum quod creavit Deus, fuit coelnm et terra — that which God 
created first was heaven and earth. It is a rule of Hebrew syn- 
tax that, in the tranquil and natural arrangement of a sentence, 
" the more important words should take precedence of those that 
are less important." Under this rule, Hurwitz remarks,* " The 
order of words in the first verse of the Book of Genesis may, per- 
haps, appear an exception, as it begins with a word apparently 
the least expressive. But it is highly probable that the inspired 
penman, by adopting this arrangement in preference to the many 
which he might have chosen, intended to impress on our minds, 
first, that this world had a heginning^ in contradiction to those who 
maintained its eternity ; secondly, that it was not the production 
of chance, but a creation, a calling into existence by the Divine 
will " Doubtless, the verse was designed to teach both these fun- 
damental truths. But the second truth includes the first. And, 
for reasons already stated, as well as for others which follow, the 
clause, in the beginning^ must be regarded as denoting what was 
the primary act of creation. 

This appears to be the Psalmist's exposition of the verse, in 
Psa. cii. 25, " Thou, Lord, in the beginning^] hast laid the founda- 
tion of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands." 
Still further is this view corroborated by Prov. viii. 22, 23, " The 
Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works 
of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or 
ever the earth was." Here the design is two-fold ; to impress us 
with the fact that Wisdom preceded the existence of every created 
thing ; and to do this we are emphatically assured by a singular 
accumulation of sentences, that Wisdom preceded the existence 
of the material universe : evidently implying, secondly, that no 
created thing preceded the material creation.^ 

5. If it be objected to the view I have taken, that the design 

* Heb. Gram. p. 250. 

t Sept. Kar' upxi^t^ ; from which, probably, the apostle quotes, Heb. i. 10. 

J " It cannot be said that angels were created before the heavens and the earth, for 
according to the style of speaking adopted by the Scriptures, nothing which was not 
eternal existed before the world ; and in no other way do they describe eternity to U8 
than by saying, In the beginning.'''' — B. Tictet's Christian Theol., B. iii. c. iy. 



O 



NOTE. 457 

of the first chapter of Genesis Is only to describe the order In 
■which the vhilile universe was created, and cannot, tlierefore, be 
supposed to determine the period of the spiritual creation, I rejoin 
that In the opening verses of St. John's Gospel the phrase. In the 
bef/inninff, is evidently employed to take us back to a period ante- 
rior to the creation of angels. "In the beginning- was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the "Word was God. The same 
was in the beginning with God. All things were m.ade by Him; 
and without Him was not anything made that was made." Here, 
it is evident that the phrase is employed to. affirm that before 
anything existed, extra Deum, the Word existed; for the design 
of the inspired writer is to prove that everything, ad extra, was 
brought into existence by him. If Scripture, then, is to be its own; 
Interpreter, we must Infer that the phrase, in the herjinninf/, as era- 
ployed in the Book of Genesis, takes us back to the same perlodl 
And this conclusion becomes inevitable, when we remark that the' 
Gospel, in opening with this phrase, designedly imitates the language 
of the ]\Iosaic history. If the Mosaic use of the phrase, therefore, 
does not take us back to a period anterior to the creation of angels, 
It cannot be justly inferred that the Evangelic sense of the phrase 
does, but that the " all things made by Him" means only all visible 
things ; and, therefore, that angels were not made by Him ;: for 
if the Evangelist copies the phrase, the only just inference is, that 
he employs it in the same sense as that In which It was employed 
by the inspired writer from whom he derives It. And, if so, the 
only conclusion left us is, that the creation of matter preceded the 
production of mind. 

6. The same Idea appears to be included In the grand principle 
laid down by the Apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 46, " Howbeit that was not 
first which Is spiritual, but that which Is natural ; and afterwards 
that which is spiritual." It is here implied, says Theophylact, that 
" our interests are always advancing towards what is better." This 
is implied, but much more than this. These words are to be re- 
ferred, not to verse 45, which is parenthetical, but to verse 44, 
which affirms that there is a psychical, or animal body, and also a 
spiritual body. And It replies to the supposed Inquiry, why the 
spiritual body had not preceded the animal body. " The answer 
is," remarks Bloomfield, " by a reference to the Divine decree, 
that the animal must precede, the spiritual folloiv. The reason 
for this procedure is suggested in the wQvy nature of the terms 
themselves, psychical or animal, and spiritual, which imply that 
the laiter is far more perfetrt than the former. Since it is agree- 
able to the usual course of God's operations, both In the physical 
39 



458 NOTE. 

and moral world, that the more perfect should succeed the less 
perfect, and not nice versa ; and from the natural to proceed to 
the supernatural." Enlarging on this view, Barnes very justly 
observes, " The idea is, that there is a tendency towards perfec- 
tion ; and that God observes the proper order, by which that 
which is most glorious shall be secured. It was not His plan that 
all things in the beginning should be perfect ; but that perfection 
should be the work of time, and should be secured in an appro- 
priate order of events." The value of this great principle in re- 
lation to our present subject, consists in its universality. The 
Apostle is not accounting for one instance of the antecedency 
of the inferior to the superior, by merely adducing a parallel in- 
stance of the same kind. He affirms that the antecedency of the 
natural body to the spiritual body is only a harmonious part of a 
great whole ; that it is strictly analogous with the order observed 
in all the Divine operations ; and that the principle of that order 
is progress. From which it follows, that the material creation 
preceded the spiritual ; and, therefore, that the angelic order of 
beings was called into existence subsequent to the origination of 
matter. 

For the reasons already assigned, I forbear repeating here the 
remainder of the article referred to, respecting the comparative 
status of the angel and the man. It may not be amiss, however, 
to say that the proposition on the subject amounts to this, that 
while the present condition of angels is, in some respects, superior 
to that of man during his earthly sojourn, they are inferior to him 
both as it respects his original constitution, and his ultimate desti- 
nation. The contrary opinion is, I think, popularly or generally 
made out in this way (quite as much, at least, as by any of the pas- 
sages of Scripture which appear to favor it) by taking it for granted 
that they have always been inhabitants of heaven ; and, consequent- 
ly, investing their entire history with its grandeur ; by vaguely asso- 
ciating with the mention of their name all that is said in Scrip- 
ture respecting the uncreated Angel of Jehovah, and the grand 
symbolic beings existing only in vision ; by transferring to man 
comparisons of inferiority belonging to different members of their 
own order ; by forgetting that while man is still a probationer, 
they are a stage beyond him, having entered on their future state ; 
and by instituting comparisons, not as justice would require, be- 
tween a fallen man in perdition and a fallen angel, or between 
" the elect angels" and " the spirits of just men made perfect," 
but between a holy angel and unreclaimed, depraved man ; which 
is pretty much as if we should infer the rank of an unfallen angel 



r^ 



NOTE. 



459 



from one of the " unclean spirits" In " the herd of swine," as com- 
pared with the loftiest of the redeemed in heaven. On the other 
hand, it does not appear to be sufficiently considered that, in their 
history, the process of the Divine manifestation is only carried 
directly to the point of holiness and justice, that here it stops ; 
that, in the history of man, the process not only goes over the 
same ground, but advances beyond ; that the nature taken into 
mysterious and indissoluble union with the Divine nature, is that 
of man ; and that, thus ineffably exalted, it occupies the highest 
throne in heaven. 




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g,rtmeo/ 



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l\b3 



160 



INDEX 



Action, moral approbation of, prior to any 
thought of i:s utility, 146. 

Actions generalized, 264. 

Activity, love of, 87 ; law of, 208 ; of man, 
necessary to his development, 209 ; the 
world, a call to it, 210 ; highest form of, 
210 ; of Eden, 211 ; of heaven, 212. 

Affection, what, 86 ; social, subordination 
of. 233 ; objects of, 23 r ; liabiUdes of, 333. 

Age, of the world, every one its o^ra expe- 
rience, 376, 377. 

Analogical, Mosaic account of creation, 14; 
relation of man and nature, 320. 

Analogy, reason of, 314 ; of man's creation 
with prior creations, 321 ; of man with 
nature, 322—421 ; of moral difficulties 
with natural, 328. 

Angels, prior to man, 3 ; some had sinned, 
7; probable rela!;ion of, to the human 
economy, 32, 448 ; their views of the 
Divine holiness, 345, 447 ; their mutual 
relations, different fiom ours, 347, 417 ; 
the great lesson of their fall, 417. 

Animal mind, 202. 

Antecedents, logical and chronological, 71. 

Anthropopathic, Mosaic account of crea- 
tion, 9 

Appetites, what, 83 : subordination of, 235 ; 
objects of, 233, 237 ; have their value, 
238 ; habilitles of, 361. 

Approve, disposition to, 91. 

Arguments, a priori mid a posteriori, 72. 

Art, 53, 218. 

Attention, what, 122 ; effects of, 123, 125 ; 
advantages of, 124. 

Barbarism, man's first condition not one of, 
182—170. 

Beauty and sublimity, emotions of, 92. 

Being, an infinite,- apprehensible, 63. 

Belief, voluntary, 123, 251 ; man, responsi- 
ble for, 249 — 251 ; aids understanding, 
134 ; of an external universe, an ultimate 
fact, 302 ; habili:ies of, 358, 363. 

Beliefs, primary, characteristics of, 55 ; 
presupposed in creation, 55, 72 ; relation 
to the mind, 58 : number of, 64 ; princi- 
ple which should determine it, 65 ; what 
they must include, 65 ; validity, 66 ; 
grounds for expecting, 70. 

Brain, human, relative properties of, 192. 

Categories, different kinds of, 65. 
Cause, idea of, how given, 47 ; final, 51 ; 
an ultimate fact, 302 ; man, a cause, 303. 
Change, a law of the universe, 2, 259, 321 ; 



reason of, 339 ; time of, neither necessary 
nor capricious, 340; in relation to the 
first man, 341; condi:ions of, fulfilled. 
342—350. 

Changes, physical, greater before man, 2. 

Chaos, probable extent of, 16 ; probable 
volcanic cause of, 18. 

Character, tind motive, reaction of. 111 ; 
nothing indifferent to, 214, 289 ; what, 
and its relation to habit, 250, 439 ; pros- 
pective, 275 ; not formed by the external, 
280 ; its Divine model, 283 ; a self-forma- 
tion, 303 ; endless diversity of, possible, 
388. 

Characteristic of the new economy, 5. 

Chronology, sacred, 181. 

Classification, methods of, 43; of man, 243, 
334 ; universal, principles of, 330 ; illus- 
tration of, 330 ; characteristics of, 332 ; 
grounds of, 333 ; the final, 337 ; man's 
power of, LUustrates Divine wisdom, 433. 

Co-existence and successive existence, 74. 

Conception, what, 51. 

Conscience, essential to responsibility, 132 ; 
universality of, 134 ; uniformity, want of, 
135 ; a distinct faculty, 147 ; its function, 
148 ; in relation to the motives, 151 ; to 
the will, 151 ; universal for the mind — 
unintermitting, 152 ; supreme, 153, 236, 
238, 437 ; non-compulsory, 155 ; its per- 
version within limits, 155 ; its external 
relations, 221, 440 ; obligations of, 245, 251. 

Consciousness, ultimate authority of, 67, 
302 ; no other ground of knowledge con- 
ceivable, 67 ; of obligation, 149. 

Coutinuitv, law of, 180 ; physiological, with- 
in Umics, 183. 

Creation of man, 3. 21 ; time of, contingent, 
235, 322 ; in analogy with prior creations, 
321 ; related to the physical condition of 
the earth, 222 ; not deranging the uni- 
formity of nature, 222 ; six days' process 
of, 15 ; of woman, 23 ; truths, logically 
presupposed in, 6(3, 72 ; a syllogism, 74, 
80 ; order of, 229. 

Creations prior, 16 ; all possible, not desi- 
rable, 373: nor neeessarv. 371. 

Credibility of testimony, 16l. 

Death, the kind of, threatened, 178. 

Deduction, illustrated, 74. 

Dependence, a law of the universe, 285 
illustrated bv the time of man's creation 
236; by his first locality , 283 ; his con 
stitution, 287 ; his knowledge of, esseU' 
tial, 291 ; everything signiJBed it, 292 



o 



INDEX. 



461 



his subjective, how it agrees -with free- 1 
dom, t'lieories of, 292 ; the first man, made 
to feel his, 344 ; the necessity for teach- 
ing it incre;xsed by sin, 416. 

Design, idea of, how given, 51 ; Divine, man 
an iilusDratioa of, 422 — 428. 

Desires, 87- 

Development, law of, 185 ; conditions of 
356; irregular, dangers of, 335; advan- 
tages of, 370 ; possible, 373. 

Difficuldes, moral, in analogy with natural, 
328 ; harmonized in moral government. 
361. 

DispensaMon, the probationarj'. its great 
le.sson, 418 ; its lesson increasingly neces- 
sary, 417. 

Disposicions, impartative, 89. 

Earth, already a scene of Divine power, 
3 ; wisdom, 4 ; goodness, 5 ; now, of mor- 
al government, 6, 9, 174, 265, 277; Adamic, 
made from pre-exisdng matter, 14 ; the 
term variously applied, 16 ; man's physi- 
cal relations to, 215; 322 ; and man mu- 
tually adapted, 288. 

Eden, probable situation of, 17 ; man's con- 
dicion in, 167, 290, 430, 431; scene of 
moral government, 174, 242, 265, 277 ; his 
activity in, 211 ; his relations in, 224 ; 
man's being placed in, dependent on 
God, 283 ; everything there, signified his 
dependence, 293. 

Embryotic theory, unfounded, 193. 

Emotions, necessary, 85 ; nature of, 86 ; di- 
vision of, 87 ; appropriative, 87 ; impar- 
tative, 89 ; arrestive. 91 ; perfective, 92 ; 
further generalization of, 95 ; relation to 
the grea'. scheme, 93 ; co-extensive with 
means of knowledge, 97 ; to be cultivated, 
93 ; affording a scale for the valuation of 
objects, 9S, 99 ; its external relations, 219 ; 
obligations of, 245, 249 ; liabilities of, 330, 
335; illustrative of Divine wisdom, 442 ; 
sub.servient to virtue, 437. 

Esteem, love of, 88 

Evidence, degrees of, 77 ; man's liabilities 
respecting, aiS, 383. 

Experience, logically presupposes primary 
beliefs, 56 ; of freedom and dependence, 
necessary, 338 ; concUtions of, 339 ; why, 
284 ; incommunicable, 379. 

Externality, idea of, how given, 49 ; essen 
tial to reasoning, 49. 

Fall of man, change involved in, 179 ; not 
without pre-iutimations, 328, 333 ; of pro- 
found interest, 313 ; consequences of, 
personal, 403; consequences, not arbi- 
trary, 403 ; relative effects, 409 ; made 
illustrative of holiness, 447. 

Final cause, idea of, how given, 51 ; science 
recedes from, how, 78. 

Forekno'.vledge, mode of Divine and human, 
different, 107. 

Freedom, of will, false views of, 102 ; the 
earth specially adapted for i", 289 ; agrees 
with subjective dependence, 292 ; moral, 



idea of, necessary, 311 ; dangers of, 342, 
381, 336. 
Future, why more important than the 
present, 237 ; and the present, balanced, 
331. 

God, holiness and justice of, what, 6 ; love 
due to, supreme, 220, 317 ; law of the uni- 
verse, 384 ; man's relations to, profound, 
222 ; yn]l of, supreme, 233, 238 ; man's 
obUgation to obey, 251 — 255 ; obedience 
to, happiness, 273 ; sustains man, yet 
leaves him free, 293; holiness of, ade- 
quately illustrated, 345 — 350. 436--452 ; 
resources of. unUmi.ed, 391 ; his hatred 
of sin, 415 ;' power of, illustrated, 420 — 
442 ; his wisdom, 422—428 ; his goodness, 
426—433; inconceivably excellent, 444, 
449. 

Goodness, Divine, man an illustration of, 
428 — 436 ; subservient to holiness, 446. 

Habit, law of, 125 ; advantages of, 126 ; 
evil, 127 ; confirmation of, 269 ; relation 
to character, 270 ; subservient to vu-tue, 
439, 441. 

HoUness, what, 6 ; all-sufllciency of, illus- 
trated, 345, 448 ; man made for, 433—452. 

Idealism, the reaction of representational- 
ism, 40. 

Ideas of space and time, how given, 45 ; 
cause and efi'ect, 47 ; substance and attri- 
bute, 48 ; externality, 49 ; resemblance, 
50 ; final cause, 51 ; logical and chrono- 
logical, 59. 

Identity, of men, not dependent on species, 
24 ; personal, 200. 

Ignorance, its relation to guilt, 261, 265, 
270. 

Image of God, man made in, 8, 9, 180, 432, 
443 ; man has the idea of it, 283, 335 ; 
might have constantly approached it, 283 ; 
departure from it, diversified. 284. 

Imagination, works of, anticipate criticism, 
82 ; distinguished from fancy, 83 ; relates 
to the possible, 83 ; to the nioral, 84, 272, 
425 ; its external relations, 217 ; obhga- 
tions of, 244 ; liabilities of, 353. 

Immortality, of man, implied in his proba- 
tion, 175 ; not inherently necessary, 290 ; 
natural suggestions of, 1, 324. 

Individuality of an object, what, 50. 

Induction, logic of, 52 ; illustrated, 76. 

Infinite, our notion of, 62 ; Being, appre- 
hensible, 63. 

Influence, law of, 230 ; man's, over him- 
self, 231 ; capable of increase, 231 ; over 
nature, 232 ; with his fellow-men, 233, 
421; with God, 234 ; of tature on man, 234. 

Instinct, what, 203 ; an ultimate fact, 206 ; 
in man subservient to virtue, 436, 440. 



Justice, Divine, what, 
man, 90. 



sentiment of, hu- 



Knowledge of objects, immediate, 39 — 41 , 



462 



INDEX. 



certainty of, 66 ; Iotc of, 87 ; kind and 
degree of, dependent on the \vill of God, 
28y ; means of, illustrates Divine desiarn. 



Language, what it includes, 157 ; origin of, 
1^ ; prinii;ive, 165 : obligations of, 245, 
248 ; ics analogies and relations, Shi ; 
dangers it involves, 359; diversi:ies of. 
insulate mankind, 376. 

Lav?, idea of, necessary, 313 ; primal, sec 
probationary. 

Laws, general, obedience to, essential to j 
happiness, 253, 273 ; not causes, 259 ; 
means of ascertaining th«»m, 261 ; in suf- ! 
ficiency of 284 ; do not exclude Provi- 
dence 263 y"7 ; do not explain phenom- 
ena, 295 ; are not causes, 2c>5 ; idea of, 
necessary, 313. 

Liberty, love of, 90 ; of the will, false views 
of, 102 ; of indifference, 114. 

Life an ultimate fact, 3^J0 ; human, a pro- 
baticQ, 338. 

Logic, science of, 51. 

Man, the earth prepared for him, 1, 428 ; 
his creation of deep interest, 3, 21 ; his 
constitution, 8 ; chosen, 287 ; in the Di- 
vine Image, 9, ISO, 432, 443 ; emhodies 
pre-existing laws, 21, 31 ; made of the 
connnon earth, 22 ; organic, 22 ; animal, 
23 ; not a transmuted being, 23 ; instinc- 
tive, 30 i belongs to the original scheme 
of organization, 32 , intelligent, the being 
to and by whom the manifestation is 
made, 35, 38 ; must be placed in sensible 
communication with nature, 35 ; his ear- 
liest sensations, 42 ; reflective, 43 ; ration- 
al, 54 ; imaginative, 81 ; emotional, 85 ; 
voluntary, 100 ; recognises moral quaUty 
In actions, 131 ; primitive condition of, 
166, 428—435 ; ' probationary, 174 ; im- 
mortal, 175 ; recency of, 182 ; his struc- 
ture, superiority of, 185 ; social, 189 ; 
perceptions, as compared with his organs, 
191 ; brain, 192 ; his relative superiority, 
207, 242 ; his activity, 208 ; relations, 212 ; 
to GoJ, 223 ; in Eden, 225 ; his relation 
to order, 228 ; his influence, 230, 238 ; 
his subordination, 235 ; classification of, 
243, 334; 333 ; obligations, 243 ; well " 
ing, 267 ; everything belonging to him 
important, 268 ; his dependence, 285 ; 
sustained, yet free, 292 -, a combination 
of ultimate facts, 308 ; by necessary truth 
communes with the Infinite, 313 ; in 
analogy vnth the great system, 314 
made to know and love GoJ. 316 ; can 
not change a law of nature, 323 ; law of 
change respecting, 336 ; his fall, 343 
consequences of, 403 ; Divine Method 
reason of, in relation to, 351 ; his condi- 
tions of development, 355 ; his liabilities, 
857—387 ; every part of, on probation, 
368 ; potential, 374 ; every individual, 
has distinct treatment, 375 ; why sepa- 
rated iiito families and nations, 379 ; 



possible aberrations of, endless, 388 ; his 
probationary trial, 373 — 392 ; himself, a 
power, 420 ; an illustration of Divine 
wisdom, 395 — 400; of Goodness, 428— 
433 ; of Holiness, 438 — 449 ; may well 
await results, 450. 
Matter, Adamic earth made from pre-exist- 
ing, 14 ; origination of, 15, 477 ; existence 
of, an ultunate fact, 299. 
^Memory, nothing absolutely lost from it, 

214, 217, 270. 
Method, divine, in creation, reason of, 351 ; 
why necessary for man, 352 ; in. relation 
to God, 373 ; reason for, gains firce ^rith 
time, 3i'4 ; extends to worlds, 378 ; e;ich 
distinct, yet part of a whole, 3S0 ; ever 
receiving accessions, 385 ; complications 
of, infinite, 387. 
jMind, like matter, known by its properties, 
49 ; has truths of its own, 57 ; involves 
the highest truths, 70 ; transcends na- 
ture, 72 ; simple and indivisible, 148, 201 ; 
and matter, distinct, 197 ; animal, 203 ; 
human, superiority of, 206 ; agrees well 
its design, 207 ; lofty position of, 207 ; an 
ultimate fact, 302. 
Minds, divine and human, must have some 

things in common. 35. 
Moral government, earth a scene of, 6, 9 ; 
in Eden, 174, 242, 265, 277 ; the proper 
notion of, 275 ; not fully developed on 
earth, 276 ; its perfection, 277 ; no viola- 
tion of nature, 323 ; certain problems of, 
331. 
Moral science, province of, 133. 
Jlorality, see Virtue. 
Mosaic account of creation characterized, 

10-14. 
Motives, conditionally resistible, 103 ; the 
strongest, 104 ; force of, differs from phy- 
sical causation, 106 ; not external, lli) ; 
and character re-act. 111 ; conditions of 
volition, 113 ; concvirrence of, with the 
will, 114, 305 ; graduated scale cf, 233, 
315 ; obligations of, 248 ; subjective, 305 ; 
of different kinds, to be balanced. 361. 
366. 
Muscular system given to the will, 127. 

Nature, and man proceed inversely, 76 ; 
theories of, 296 ; forces of, 297 ; sustained 
bv God, 299 ; a limited prediction of m.-in. 
320 ; subject to a law of change, 2, 259. 
321. 

Na*^ural religion, means of, 261 — 264, 277, 
318, 426 ; insufficiency of, 264, 279 ; office 
of, 278 ; conditions of, 354. 

Necessary truth, characterized, 55. 59, 309, 
310 ; and contingent, 73 ; presupposed iv 
every generalization, 309 ; means of com- 
munion with the Infinite. 313. 

Objects, methods of classifying, 44. 
Objective and subjective, nice adjustment 

of, 54 ; relation between, 68. 
Obligation, consciousness of, ultimate, ^*^ , 

law of, 243 ; man's internal, 243 ; e*—! 



O 



INDEX. 



463 



increasing, 246; extent of, 246, 318 ; to 
God, supreme, 251 ; continuous, 253 ; 
ever increasing, 254 ; yarding, 254 ; uni- 
versal, 255 ; failure in, remediless, 255 ; 
susceptible of increase fi'om without, 257 ; 
ground of, 257 ; moral, distinct from 
wrong, 260. 

Opinions, man responsible for, 251. 

Optical, Mosaic account of creation, 11. 

Order, physical laws recalled in, 20 ; law of, 
in creation, 226 ; illustrated in man's 
functions and development, 227 ; of crea- 
tion, 229. 

Organization, an ultimate fact, 300. 

Pain, office of, 276. 

Passion, what, 86. 

Past, brought forwards, 10 ; the law illus- 
trated, 15, 20—24, 30, 31. 

Perception, of objects, phenomenal, 36 ; 
and real, 37 ; conditions of, constant, 41 ; 
superior, as compared with his organs, 
191. 

Perfection, man's yearning after ideal, 283 ; 
idea of, necessary, 312, 335. 

Philosophy, positive, what, 297 ; conditions 
of, a54. 

Phrenology, 195. 

Power, idea of, how given, 47 ; love of, 88 ; 
man's greatest, on what it depends, SiSS — 
342 ; an ultimate fact, 303 ; of Gk)d, illus- 
trations of, 418. 

Prayer, influence of, 99, 234, 422 ; spirit of, 
obligatory, 256 ; compatible with Divine 
immutability, 306 ; efficacy of, an ulti- 
mate fact, 307. 

Presuppositions, in creation, 56, 59 ; what 
they must include, 66, 72. 

Primary qualities of matter, 37 : distinc- 
tion from secondary, relatively accounted 
for, 38. 

Probationary, law, its import, 173, 282, 291, 
393 — 402 :'no violation of nature, 323 : in- 
capable of repetition, :W9 : problems, 361 
— 364 : human life, 367 : necessary, 368 : 
why, 389 : discipline of every man differ- 
ent, 374: conditions, 379: consequences 
of violation. 403 : breach of, worse than of 
a material law, 411 : principle of, uni- 
versal, 412 : illustrative of holiness, 444. 

Progression, law of, 34 : ground of. in rela- 
tion to man, 34 : perception, 34 : reflec- 
tion, 43: reason, 54: imagination, 81: 
emotions, S3 : will, 100 : conscience, 131 : 
language, 158 : paradisiacal condition, 
166 : law of, subject to a wider law, 340 : 
human, possible, 373 : illustration of 
Goodness, 431. 
Providence, man's superior capacity for, 
242 : not excluded by natural laws, 266 : 
administers laws, 277 : distinguished from 
creation, 290 : how lost sight of, 299 : the 
first man. an illustration of, 426: plans 
of, vast, 4-50. 

Reason, 54: practical and speculative, 60 : 
facta of, exist as beliefs, 61 : see Beliefs ; 



its external relations, 2l7 : obligations of, 
244, 248 : liabilities it involves, 358 : sub- 
servient to virtue, 437. 

Recency of man's creation, 181. 

Reflection, man capable of, 43 : its external 
relations, 216 : obligations of, 245, 248. 

Relations, of objects, where are they ? 44 : 
law of in creation, 212 : man's internal, 
212, 314 : his external, 215, 314, 320 : to 
God, 22:3 : innumerable, 224 : continu- 
ous, and increa.sing, 225: liabilities of, 
355 ; proofs of design, 426. 

Representationalism, occasions of, 29. 

Resemblance, idea of, how given, 50. 

Revelation, the -kind of necessary, 263, 
280 : direct, no violation of natural law, 
327. 

Right, means more than useful, 147 : and 
■vvrongjdistinction between immutable,311. 

Sabbath, primaeval, institution of, 171 : 
illustration of Groodness, 430. 

Science, pure fa,nd exact, why so called, 46 : 
becoming deductive, 79: conditions of, 
352 : province of, 354 : not philosophy, 
354. 

Scriptures, laws of the will implied in, 130. 

Secondary qualities of matter, what, 37, 49. 

Self-government, man's power of, 231, 240, 
422, 438 : conditions and advantages, 238 
—243. 

Self-love, subordination of, 235 : object of, 
236, 237 : Uabilities of, 362. 

Sensation, man capable of knowing the oc- 
casion of, 36 : conditions of, 36 — 41 : con- 
stant, 41 : its external relations, 216 : ob- 
ligations of, 243, 248 : an ultimate fact, 
301 : Uabilities of, 358. 

Sensibility, what, 86. 

Sin, implies freedom of will, 117 : tends to 
repeat itself, 127, 255, 269 : includes its 
own punishment, 276, 325, 436 : makes 
possible endless moral deformities, 284, 
388 : materializes, 305 : subjective exist- 
ence of, ultimate, ?ffj : the first, 343: 
existence of, assumed, 392 : how it com- 
menced, 404 : how it depraves, 405 : ab- 
stract and concrete, 406, 411 : the first, 
guilt of, 411: the first, foreseen, 412: 
preventible, 412 : occasion of good, 414, 
433 : God's hatred of, 415. 

Sinning, the power and danger of, distinct, 
412. 

Social, man, not gregarious, 189. 

Society, love of, 88, 90. 

Space and time, ideas of, how given, 45. 

Species, what, 24: human, unity of, 94: 
plurality of, involves greater difficiilties, 
30,52. 

Speech, see Language. 

Structure, man's superioi^ of, 185. 

Subjective and objective,^ice adjustment 
of, 54, 318, 320 : relation between, 67. 

Subordination, disposition to, 91 : law of, 
2:35: of man's appetites, 235 : self-love, 
236 : social affections, 236 : advantages of, 
273. 



480 



INr>EX. 



Substance, idea of, how given, 48. 
Synthesis and analysis, 74. 

Taste, -what, 86 : ultimate relations of, 221, 
442. 

Temperament, what, 86. 

Temptation, the fatal, 401. 

Testimony, credibility of, 161. 

Thought, forms or laws of, 44. 

Transmutation, theory of, unfounded, 183, 
193. 

Truth, necessary, characteristics of, 55 : 
and contingent, 73 : power of, 238 : mor- 
al, the mig-itiest, 239. 

Truths, logically presupposed in creation, 
60: conditional and unconditional, 60, 

n. 

Ultimate fact, what, 395 : instances of, 299. 

Unconditioned, our notion of the, 62. 

Uniformity, or law, why necessary, 258: 
of natui-e, 258 : physical, its necessity 
conditional, 259 : see Laws : man's crea- 
tion no violation of, 322. 

Unity of species, 24 : Scriptural intimations 
of, 25 : difficulties of the view, diminish- 
ing, 25 : evidence of, anatomical, 26 : 
physiological, 23 : psychological, 26: his- 
torical, 27 : philological, 27 : analogical, 
29 : chronological objection to, not insur- 
mountable, 29 : plurality of, involves 
greater difficulties, 30 : evidence of unity, 
mutually aiding, 31. 

Utility, why not the ground of virtue, 143 : 
may ultimately coincide with it, 142, 214, 
267, 442. 

Virtue, notion of, not derived from arbi- 
trary appointment, 137 : nor from intel- 
lectual intuition 138 : nor judgment, 139 : 
nor association, 140 : nor utility, 141 : 
nor from expediency, 141 : why not from 
a calculation of consequences, 143 : has 



an objective existence, 147, 222, 251 : may 
ultimately coincide with utility, 142, 214, 
268, 442 : ground of, 257 : idea of, ulti- 
mate, 307 : immutable, 310 : ditferent 
grounds of, assigned, what it indicates, 
319,443: made pleasurable, 438, 440: 
man made for, 436 — 448. 

Volitions, consciously free, 109. 

Voluntary acts, made easy by repetition, 
124. 

Well-being, law of, 267 : man's, coincident 
with the Divine glory, 268 : condibions of, 
268, 275 : physical, 268, 271 : intellectual, 
272 : conditional, analogies of, 325 

Will, why necessary, 101 : what, 102 : its 
freedom, false views of, 102: a conditioned 
cause, 106 : objections to, and replies, 
108 : consciously free, 109 : ultimate, 109 : 
gives the idea of cause, 111 : no illusion, 
111 : essential to moral government, 113 : 
a particular, co-exiscingwifch a universal, 
116: and %vith the laws of nature, 118: 
laws of, in relation to motives, 121 : mus- 
cular system placed at the service of, 127 : 
has power with God, 128: laws of , im- 
plied in Scripture, 130: a novelty on 
earth, 130 : image of the Divine, 132 : 
constitutes man a person, 1.32: its exter- 
nal relations, 220 : power of, 231 : obliga- 
tions of, 245, 250 : not without foreshad- 
owings in nature, 325 • liabilities of, 361, 
366. 

Wills, union of, mighty fbr good, 128. 

Wisdom, of God, man an illustration of, 
422—428. 

Woman, creation of, 23 : a second mind, 
an addition to man's means of know- 
ledge, 170: creation of, illustration of 
Providence, 430. 

World, every age of, its own character, 
376, 377 : each, its own discipUne, 378. 

Wrong and guilt, distinct, 260, 265. 




GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, 
HAVE JUST PUBLISHED 

LAKE SUPERIOR, 

ITS 

PHYSICAL CHARACTER, VEGETATION, AND ANIMALS, 

COMPARED WITH OTHER AND SIMILAR REGIONS ; 

BY L. AGASSIZ, 

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM 

JOHN L. LE CONTE, A. A. GOULD, ASA GRAY, T. W. HARRIS, J. E, CABOT, 
LEO. LESQUEREUX, AND EDWARD TUCKERMAN ; 

WI T H A 

MRRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION AND ILLUSTRATIONS, 
BY J. E. CABOT. 

This work, which has been long delayed on account of the unexpected amount of 
material, is one of the mostTaluable scientific works that has appeared in this country. 

Embodying the researches of our best scientific men, relating to a hitherto compar- 
atively unkno^vn region, it will be found to contain a great amount of new scientific 
information. 

The illustrations, seventeen in number, are in the finest style of the art, by Sonrel ; 
embracing Lake and Landscape scenery, Fishes, and other objects of Natural History, 
with an outline map of Lake Superior. 

NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
" The character of these scientific labors of Prof. Agassiz, is eminently philosophic 
and sviggestive ; and the grand idea of the work is the demand for the recognition in 
nature of the agency of a personal God as a scientific fact, above and beyond all the 
conditions of physical cause." — Literary World. 

" The volume is one of the monuments which Prof. Agassiz has erected, in proof of 
his unwearied enterprise and industry, and his large and various learning." — Boston 
Post. 

" A work rich and varied in matter pregnant of lofty suggestions and compi-ehensive 
truths. We commend it to all intelligent readers, whether scientific or otherwise, and 
whether lay or clerical." — Christian Register. 

" This is a very beautiful volume, sent out in the very best style of the trade. Its 
subject, to the lover of natural history, is intensely interesting. The illustrations axe 
numerous and admirable ." — Christian Times. 

" With these extracts, we reluctantly conclude our imperfect notice of this admirable 
work by Prof. Agassiz. If what we have written will induce others to read the whole 
book thoughtfully, we shall be content to have gone through our labor." — Ck. Reflector. 

" The results of this remarkable expedition have been carefully written out by differ- 
ent members of the party. It is a work full of interest and instruction to all who have 
given even the slightest attention to the Natural History of the United States, and will 
undoubtedly be regarded as one of the most important contributions which this coun- 
try has ever made to that most fascinating science." — Providence Journal. 



WORKS IN PRESS. 

THE • 

POETEY OF SCIENCE, 

on, STUDIES OF THE 

PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF NATURE. 
BY ROBERT HUNT, 

AUTHOR OF "PANTHEA," " -RESEARCHES ON LIGHT," ETC. 

" How charming is Divine Philosophy ! 
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 
Where no crude surfeit reigns." 

RE-PRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON REVISED EDITION. 

Notices of the London Press. 
" All the great forces of Nature — gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and 
aflSnity — aye successively treated of by Mr. Hunt, and their unity and dependence 
illustrated. It is this which will make his work popular, as it is not encumbered with 
heavy details or specious pretensions of learning. * * A book well calculated to 
promote a taste for the studies of nature." — Athenceum, 

" We know of no work upon science which is so well calculated to lift the mind 
from the admiration of the wondrous works of creation to the belief in, and worship 
of, a First Great Cause. * * One of the most readable epitomes of the present sta.te 
and progress of science we have yet perused." — Morning Herald. 

'• The design of Mr. Hunt's volume is striking and good. The subject is very ably 
dealt with, and the object very well attained ; it displays a fund of knowledge, and is 
the work of an eloquent and earnest man."— TAe Examiner. 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR, 

OR, THE ASTEROLEPIS OF STROMNESS. 

By HUGH MILLER. 

FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION. VTITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 

BY LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



PRINCIPLES OF ZOOLOGY. 

PART II. SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGY, 

In wliicli tlie principles of classification are applied, and the principal 
groups of animals are briefly characterized. 

By L. AGASSIZ and A. A. GOULD. 

1 Vol. l2mo., iviili many illustrations. 



o 



COMPARATIVE 

PHYSICAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY, 

OR THE ST0DT OF 

THE EARTH AN^D ITS INHABITANTS. 

A SERIES OF GRADUATED COURSES FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. 

BY ARNOLD GUYOT. 

Late Professor of Physical Geography and History, at Neuchatel, Smtzerlandf 

Author of " £arth and Man,'^ etc. 

G., K. §■ L. are happy to announce that the above worJc, which has been undertaken 
in compliance with the earnest solicitations of numerous teachers and friends of education, 
is in a forward state of preparation. The plan of the author, and the principal charac- 
teristics of this series may be gathered from, the following exposition of the subject : 

A knowledge of the globe we inhabit, whether considered in itself alone, or in its 
relations to man, the distribution of the races of men, and the civil divisions of its sur- 
face, are subjects of interest too varied, too direct, and too vital, not to command the 
attention, and excite the sympathy of the mind at every period of life. 

If Geography has been considered a dry and often fruitless study, — if indeed, to 
teach it with success has been considered as one of the most difficult problems in edu- 
cation, there is reason to believe that the difficulty lies not in the subject but in the 
method of teaching it. 

In most manuals the accumulation of facts, and especially the want of an arrange- 
ment of them, really corresponding to their connection in nature, renders the study 
difficult, and overburdens the memory at the expense of a true and thorough under- 
standing of the subject. Hence there is confusion and a want of clear and comprehen- 
sive views, and consequently a lack of interest for the student. For, if the mind seeks 
to comprehend, it is only interested in what appears clear and well connected. To attain 
to this end it is necessary — 

First. To attempt a rigid selection of materials, and to reject from school instruc- 
tion all details which have but a transient value, and, on the other hand, to render 
facts of permanent value prominent ; preferring, for instance, the details of Physical 
Geography and of Ethnography, to those of Statistics, which may find a larger place 
elsewhere. 

Second. To distribute geographical instruction throughout the whole course of edu- 
cation, so as to divide the labor of learning, and to give at the same time to each period 
of life the nutriment most appropriate for its intellectual taste and capacity. To this 
end, the globe should be studied from the different points of view successively ; gradu- 
ating each view to the capacity of ^ different classes of students. At first, the fiinda- 
mental outlines, alone, should be presented, and next, not only additional facts, but a 
deeper understanding of the connection, and so on ; and thus, by a regular and natural 
path, a full and intelligent knowledge of the globe in all its relations, will be finally 
attained. 

Third. The comparative method, recently adopted with so much success in Europe, 
should always be employed ; for it is by the recognition of resemblances and differences 
that the mind seizes upon the true characters, and perceives the natural relations, and 
the admirable connection, of the different parts which form the grand whole ; in a 
•word, gains real knowledge. 

The series hereby announced is designed to meet these wants. It will consist of three 
coiirscs adapted to the capacity of three different ages and periods of study. The first 
is intended for primary schools, and for children of from seven to ten years. The 
second is adapted for higher schools, and for young persons of from ten to fifteen years. 
The third is to be used as a scientific manual in Academies and Colleges. 

Each course will be divided into two parts, one of purely Physical Geography, the 
other for Ethnography, Statistics, Political and Historical Geography. Each part will 
be illustrated by a colored Physical and Political Atlas, prepared expressly for this 
purpose, delineating, with the greatest care, the configuration of the surface, and 
the other physical phenomena alluded to in the corresponding work, the distribution 
of the races of men, and the political divisions into States. Each part with the corres- 
ponding maps will be sold separately. 

The two parts of the first, or preparatory course, are now in a forward state of pre- 
paration, and will be issued at an early day. 

Also, in preparation, by the same Author, 

A SERIES OF ELEGANTLY COLORED MURAL MATS, 

EXHIBITDfO 

THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OP THE GLOBE, 

PROJECTED OK A LARGE SCALE, FOR THE RECITATION ROOM. 



T IT P 

AMUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY : 

YEAE BOOK OF FACTS' IN SCIENCE AND ART, 

Exhibiting the most important discoveries and improvements in Mechanics amd 

Useful Arts, Natural Philosophy, Ch&mistry, Astronomy, Meteorology, Zoology^ 

jBotany, Mineralogy, Geology, Geography, Antiquities, cfr. together with a 

list of Recent Scientific Fublicaiions ; a classij^ed list ojt' Patents ; 

Obituaries of Eminent Scientific Men ; An. index of important 

Papers in Scientific Jow-nals, Reports, ^c. 

EDITED BY 

DAVID A. AVELLS, 

OF THE LAWKENCE SCIEMIFIC SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, AND 

GEORGE BLISS, Jr. 

The ANNTJAii of Scientific Discovery is designed for all those who 
desire to keep pace with the advancement of Science and Art. The great and 
daily increasing number of discoveries in the different departments of science 
is such, and the announcement of them is scattered through such a multitude 
of secular and scientific publications, that it is very difficult for any one to 
obtain a satisfactory survey of them, even had he access to all these publi- 
cations. But scientific Journals, especially those of Europe, besides being 
many of them in foreign languages, have a very limited circulation in this 
country, and are accessible to but very few. It is evident, therefore, that an 
annual publication, giving a complete and condensed view of the Progress of 
Discovery in every brancn of Science and Ait, being, in fact. The Spirit of 
the Scientific Journals of the year, systematically arranged, so as to pre- 
sent at one view all the new discoveries and improved processes of the by- 
gone year, must be a most acceptable volume to every one, and greatly facili 
tate the diffusion of useful knowledge. As this work will be issued annually, 
the reading public may easily and promptly possess themselves of the most 
important facts in these departments. 

The Editors are so situated as to have access to all the scientific publi- 
cations of America, Great Britain, France, and Germany ; and have also re- 
ceived, for the present volume, the approbation as well as the counsel and 
personal contributions of many of the ablest scientific men in this country, 
among whom are Professors Agassiz, Horsford, and Wyman, of 
Harvard University, and they have the promise in future, from many 
scientific gentlemen, of articles not pubHshed previously elsewhere. They 
have not confined themselves to an examination of Scientific Journals 
and Reports, but have drawn from every source which furnished any thing of 
scientific interest. For those who have occasion for still further researches, 
they have furnished a copious Index to the scientific articles in the American 
and European Journals ; and moreover, they have prepared a list of all books 
pertaining to science which have appeared originally, or by republication, in 
the United States, during the year. A classified list of Patents, and brief obit- 
uary notices of men distinguished in Science or Art who have recently died, 
render the work still more complete. They have also taken great pains to 
render the general index to the whole work as full and correct as possible. 

It will thus be seen, that the plan of the " Annual of Scientific Dis- 
covery " is well designed to make it what it purports to be, a substantial 
summary of the discoveries in Science and Art ; and no pains have been spared 
on the part of the Editors to fulfil the design, and render it worthy of patronage. 
As the work is not intended for scientific men exclusively, but to meet Uie 
wants of the general reader, it has been the aim of the editors that the articles 
should be brief and intelligible to all ; and to give authenticity, the source 
from whence the information is derived is generally stated. Although they 
have used all diligence to render this first issue as complete as possible, in its 
design and execution, yet, they hope that experience, and the promised 
aid and co-operation from the many gentlemen interested in its success, will 
enable them in future to improve both on the plan and the details. 

This Work forms a handsome duodecimo volume of 350 pages,— price $1.00. As the 
edition is limited, all who wish to possess the first volume of this valuable publication 
must make an early application. On the receipt of one dollar, the publishers will 
forward a copy in paper covers, by Mail, post paid. 

GouM), Kendall & Lincoln, Publishers, Boston. 



ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 



''Nothing which has transpired in the scientific world during the past year, seems to 
have escaped the attention of the industrious editors. We do not hesitate to pronounce 
the work a highly valuable one to the man of Science." — Boston Journal. 

" This is a highly valuable work. We have here brought together in a volume of mode- 
rate size, all the leading discoveries and inventions which have distinguished the past 
year. Like the hand on the dial-plate, 'it marks the progress of the age.' The plan has 
our warmest wishes for its eminent success.'' — Christian Times. 

" A most acceptable volume." — Transcript. 

"The work will prove of unusual interest and value." — Traveller. 

" We have in our possession the ledger of progress for 1849, exhibiting to ns in a con- 
densed form, the operations of the world in some of the highest business transactions. To 
say that its execution has been worthy of its aim is praise sufficient." — Spring-field Re- 
publican. 

"To the artist, the artisan, the man of letters, it is indispensable, and the general reader 
will find in its pages much valuable material which he may look for elsewhere in vain." 
— Boston Herald, 

"We commend it as a standard book of reference and general information, by those 
who are so fortunate as to possess it." — Saturday Rambler. 

"A body of useful knowledge, indispensable to every man who desu'es to keep up with 
the progress of modern discovery and invention." — Boston Courier. 

"Must be a most acceptable volume to every one, and greatly facilitate the diffusion of 
useful knowledge." — Zion^s Herald. 

"A most valuable and interesting popular work of science and art." — fVashington J^Ta- 
tional Intelligencer. 

" A rich collection of facts, and one which will be eagerly read. The amount of informa- 
tion contained within its pages is very large." — Evening Gazette. 

"Such a key to the progress and facts of scientific discovery will be everywhere wel- 
comed." — ^Veto York Commercial Adi',ertiscr. 

"A most valuable, complete, and comprehensive summary of the existing facts of sci- 
ence ; it is replete with interest, and ought to have a place in every well appointed li- 
brary." — Worcester Spy. 

" We commend it to all who wish what has just been foimd out ; 4o all who would like 
to discover something themselves, and would be glad to know how : and to all who think 
they have invented something, and ai-e desirous to know whether any one else has been 
before hand with them."— Purt'tayi Recorder. 

"This is one of the most valuable works which the press has brought forth during the 
present year. A greater amount of useful and valuable information cannot be obtained 
from any bookoi the same size within our knowledge." — Washington Union. 

"This important volume will prove one of the most acceptable to oui* community that 
has appeared for a long time." — Providence Journal. 

"This is a neat volume and a useful one. Such a book has long been wanted in Amer- 
ica. It should receive a wide-spread patronage."— Sc2'e7U(/tc American., JSTexo York. 

"It meets a want long felt, both among men of science and the people. No one who 
feels any interest in the intellectual progress of the age, no mechanic or artisan, who as- 
pires to excel in his vocation, can a^'oid to be without it. A very copious and accurate 
index gives one all needed aid in his inquiries."— PAe7. Christian Chronicle. 

" One of the most useful books of the day. Every page of it contains some useful in- 
formation, and there will be no wa.ste of time in its study."— JS'or/oZA: Democrat. 

"It is precisely such a work as will be hailed with pleasure by the multitude of intelli- 
gent readers who desire to have, at the close of each year, a properly digested record of 
its progress in useful knowledge. The project of the 'editors is an excellent one, and de- 
serves and will command success." — jYorth American, Philadelphia. 
"Truly a most valuable volu.me.''^— Charleston (S. C.) Courier. 

"There are few works of the season whose appearance we have noticed with more sin- 
cere satisfaction than this admirable manual. The exceeding interest of the subjects to 
which it is devoted, as well as the remarkably thorough, patient and judicious manner in 
which they are handled by its skilful editors, entitle it to a warm reception by all the 
friends of solid and useful learning."— JV( w York Tribune. 

GOULD, ICENDALL & LLXCOLN, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. 



THE EARTH AND MAN: 

Lectures on (Comparative Physical Oeography, in its Relation to th^ History of Jilankindk 

Br Arnold Guyot, Prof. Thys. Geo. & Hist., Nouchatel. 

Translated fi-om tJi£ Freyick, by Prof. C. C. Felton.— M^itA liliutrationt. 

12rao. Price $1.25. 



*' Those who have been accustomed to regard Geography as a merely descriptive 
branch of learning, drier tiuin the remainder biscuit after a voyage, will be delighted 
to find this hitherto unattractive pursuit converted into a science, the principles of 
which are definite and the results conclusive ; a science that embraces the investiga- 
tion of natural laws and interprets their mode of operation ; which professes to dis- 
cover in the rudest forms and apparently confused arrangement of the materials com- 
posing the planets' crust, a new manifestation of the wisdom which has filled the 
earth with its riches. * * * To the readeT we shall owe no apology, if we have 
said enough to excite his curiosity and to persuade him to look to the book itself for 
further instruction." — J^orth American Review. 

" The grand idea of the work is happily expressed by the author, where he calls it 
the geographical march of history. * * * The man of science will hail it as a beauti- 
ful generalization from the facts of observation. The Chriistian, who trusts in a mer- 
ciful Providence, will draw courage from it, and liope yet more earnestly for the 
redemption of the most degraded portions of mankind. Faith, science, learning, 
poetry, taste, in a word, genius, have liberally contributed to the production of the 
work under review. Sometimes we feel as if we were studying a treatise on the 
exact sciences ; at others, it strikes the ear like an epic poem. Now it reads like 
history, and now it sounds like prophecy. It will find readers in whatever language 
it may be published ; and in the elegant English dress which it has received from the 
accomplished pen of the translator, it will not fiil to interest, instruct and inspire. 

We congratulate the lovers of history and of physical geography, as well as all 
those who are interested in the growth and expansion of our common education, that 
Prof. Guyot contemiilates the publication of a series of elementary works on Physical 
Geography, in which these two great branches of study which God has so closely 
joined together, will not, we trust, be put asunder." — Christian Examiner, 

" A copy of this volume reached us at too late an hour for an extended notice. The 
woik is one of high merit, exhibiting a wide range of knowledge, great research, and 
a philosophical spirit of investigition. Its perusal will well repay the most learned 
in such subjects, and give new views to all, of man's relation to the globe he inhabits." 
Silliman's Journal, July, 1849. 

" These lectures form one of the most valuable contributions to geographical science 
that has ever been published in this country. They invest the study of geography 
with an interest which will, we doubt not, surprise and delight many. They will 
open an entire new world to most readers, and will be found an invaluable aid to the 
teacher and student of geography." — Evening Traveller, 

" We venture to pronounce this one of the most interesting and instructive books 
which have come from the Americ-vn press for many a month. The science of which 
it treats is comparatively of recent origin, but it is of great importance, not only on 
account of its connections with other brunches of knowledge, but for its bearing upon 
many of the interests of society. In these lectures it is relieved of statistical details, 
and presented only in its grandest features. It thus not only places before us most 
instructive facts relating to the condition of the eatih, but also awakens within us a 
stronger symjiathy with the beings tliat inhabit it, and a profounder reverence for the 
beneficent Crehtor who formed it, and of whose character it is a manifestation and 
ex|)ression. They abound with the richest interest and instruction to every intelli- 
gent reader, and especially fitted to awaken enthuniasm and delight in all who are 
devoted to the study either of natural science or the history of mankind." — Providence 
Journal. 

" Geography is here presented under a new and attractive phase ; it is no longer a 
dry description of the features of the earth's surface. The influence of soil, scenery 
and clitnate upon character, has not yet received the consideration due to it from his- 
torians and philosophers. In the volume before us the profmind investigations of Hum- 
boldt, Ritter and others, in Physical Geography, are presented in a popular form, and 
with the clearness and vivacity so characteristic of French treatises on science. The 
work should be introduced into our higher schools." — The Independent, JVew Yorlc 

"'■ Geography is here made to Jissume a dignity, not heretofore attached to it. The 
knowledge communicated in these Lectures is curious, unexpected, absorbing."—* 
Christian Mirror, Portland. 

Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln, Publishers, Boston. 



O 



CHAMBERS'S 

CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

A SELECTION OF THE CHOICEST PRODUCTIONS OF ENGLISH AUTHORS, FROM THB 

EARLIEST TO THE FRESENT TIME : CONNECTED BV A CRITICAL 

AND BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY. 

EDITED BY ROBERT CHAMBERS. 

ASSISTED BY ROBERT CARRUTHER3 AND OTHER EMINENT GENTLEMEN. 

Complete in two imperial octavo volumes, of more than fourteen 

hundred pages of double column letteypress, and upwards of 

three hundred elegant illustrations. 

This valuable work has now become so generally known and appreciated, that there need 
scarcely be any thing said in commendation, except to those who have not yet seen it. 

The work embraces about One Thousand Authors, chronologically arranged and classed 
as Poets, Historians, Dramatists, Philosophers, Metaphysicians, Divines, etc., with choice 
selections from their writings, connected by a Biographical, Historical, and Critical J^arra- 
tive ; Vius presenting a compleU view of English Literature, from the earliest to the present 
time. Let the reader open where he will, he cannot fail to find matter for profit and delight, 
which, for the most part, too, repeated perusals will only serve to make him enjoy the more. 
We have indeed infinite riches in a little room. JVo one, who has a taste for literature, 
should allow himself , for a trifling consideration, to be iDithout a work which throws so 
much light upon the progress of the English language. The selections are gems — a mass 
of valuable information in a condensed and elegant form. 

EXTRACTS FROM COMMENDATORY NOTICES. 

From W. H. Prescott, AuOior of ^"^ Ferdinand and fsabella.^^ "The plan of the work 
is very judicious. * * It will put the reader in the proper point of view, for survey- 
ing the whole ground over which he is travelling. * * Such readers cannot fail to 
proni largely hy the labors of the critic who has the talent and taste to separate what 
is really beautiful and worthy of their study from what is superfluous." 

" I concur in the foregoing opinion of Mr. Prescott." — Edward Everett. 

" It will be a useful and popular work, indispensable to the library of a student of 
English literature." — Francis fVayland. 

''We hail with peculiar pleasure the appearance of this work, and more especially 
its republication in this country at a price which places it within the reach of a great 
number of readers." — JVbrt/t American Review. 

" This is the most valuable and magnificent contribution to a sound popular litera- 
ture that this century has brought forth. It fills a place which was before a blank. 
Without it, English literature, to almost all of our countrymen, educated or unedu- 
cated, is an imperfect, broken, disjointed mass. Much that is beautiful — the most 
perfect and graceful portions, undoubtedly — was already possessed ; but it was not 
a whole. Eve.y intelligent man, every inquiring mind, every scholar, felt that the 
foundation was missing. Chambers's Cyclopaedia supplies this radical defect. It be- 
gins with the beginning ; and, step by step, gives to every one who has the intellect or 
taste to enjoy it a view of English literature in all its complete, beautiful, and perfect 
proportions." — Onondaga Democrat, JV. Y. 

" We hope that teachers will avail themselves of an early opportunity to obtain a 
work so well calculated to impjrt useful knowledge, with the pleasures and ornaments 
of the English classics. The work will undoubtedly find a place in our district and 
other public libraries; yet it should be the ' vade mecum' of every scholar." — 
Teachers^ Advocate, Syracuse, JV. Y. 

" The work is finely conceived to meet a popular want, is full of literary instruction, 
and is variously embellished with engravings illustrative of English antiquities, his- 
tory, and biography. Tte typography throughout is beautiful." — Christian Reflector, 
Boston. 

" The design has been well executed by the selection and concentration of some of 
the best productions of English intellect, from the earliest Anglo-Saxon writers down 
to those of the present day. JS'o one can give a glance at the work without being 
struck with its beauty and cheapness." — Boston Courier. 

" We should be glad if any thing we can say would favor this design. The elegance 
of the execution feasts the eye with beauty, and the whole is suited to refine and ele- 
vate the taste. And we might ask, who can fail to go back to its beginning, and trace 
liis mother-tongue from its rude infancy to its present maturity, elegance, and richness ? " 
Christian Mirror, Portland. 

*.* The Publishers of the AMERICAN Edition of this valuable work desire to stRte that, besides th« 
numerous piclormi illustnitions in the English Edition, they have greatly eiiriche<l the work by the addition 
of tine steel and mezzotint cn_^raving3 of the heads of Shakspeare, Addison, Byron ; a full length portrait 
of Dr. Johnson, and a beautilul scenic representation of Oliver Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. These impor- 
U-int and elegant additions, together with superior paper and binding, must give this a decided preferencs 
over ail other editions. 

Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln, Publlshers, Boston. 



HISTORY OF 

AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONS, 

IN ASIA, AFRICA, EUROPE, AND NORTH AMERICA, 
BY WILLIAM GAMMELL, M. A. 

With Seven Maps. l2mo. Price Seventy-Jive Cents, 
SIXTH THOUSAND. 

The publishers have been favored with the following highly commendatory letters 
from those who are the best judges of the accuracy of the work, namely, the mis- 
sionaries themselves, who have been long in the field, and are presumed to be better 
acquainted with the subject than other individuals. 

Their unequivocal testimony to the fidelity of the work must be gratifying to 
every well-wisher of the cause, and commend it to the attention of all interested in 
this subject. 

Since the return of Messrs. Osgood and Vinton, they have been serving the inter- 
ests of the Board in various parts of the country, and have also in connection with 
tfieir agency taken much interest in the circulation of the History, deeming it an 
efficient instrument in promoiing their benevolent designs. 

[From Rev. J. H. Vinton, of the Maulmain and Karen Mission.] 

I am so much interested m the circulation of Prof. Gammell's History of Missions, 
ihat I am resolved to give away every fifth copy. I cannot afford to make any 
profit in the sale of such a work. It is, as a whole, the most reliable History of 
he missions I have ever read, and could it be put in the hands of every man in the 
denomination, able to pay for it, you might then almost dispense with all other agen- 
cies, except the Magazine and Macedonian, which would still be needed, as a con- 
tinuation of the History so well begun. 

[From Bev. S. M. Osgood, of the Burman Mission.] 

Accompanying is an order for one hundred and fifty copies of Prof. Gammell'a 
Historj^ of American Baptist Missions. I read this History with great interest 
immediately after its publication, and having been for more than twelve years con- 
nected with the Mission in Burmah, am happy to be able to bear decided testimony 
to its authenticity, so far as my observation extends. I am also highly gratified 
with its adaptation to the wants of the denomination in this department of litera- 
ture. We have long needed just such a work — a work not only intrinsically val- 
uable as a History, but written in a style sufficiently attractive to insure its being 
read, not only by pastors, but by the members of our (;hurch and friends of Mis- 
sions, young and old. I am happy to be able to say, that within the circle of my 
acquaintance, the History meets with general favor, and I sincerely hope that its 
circulation may be greatly extended. I have already disposed of nearly four hun- 
dred and tifty copies, and shall continue to interest myself in its circulation. 

[From Rev. E. Kincaid.] 

As I have labored more or less at all the stations in Burmah, not only at Rangoon 
and Ava, but also in the Tenasserim and Arracan provinces, I could not but ad- 
mire the singular accuracy with which all the leading facts of these Missions 
are detailed in Prof. Gammell's History of American Baptist Missions. I have not 
found a single error of any importance. I hope our religious papers will not fail 
to let this work be known among the churclies. It furnishes the information so 
much needed. 

[From the Rev. J. Wade, of the Burman Mission.] 

So far as I have examined Gammell's History, I can most cordially recommend 
it to the public as being a very truthful and well written work. 

Availing myself of occasional opportunities to peruse it, I selected those chapters 
which treat of the Missions with which I am personally acquainted, and was delight- 
ed to find nothing on which the reader might not rely as being substantially con^ect. 
I consider it an excellent work. 

^^ A liberal discount made by the dozen or hundred copies to those who engage 
in its circulation. 

GOULD, Kendall, & Lincoln, 59 Washington Street, Boston. 



WAYLAND'S UNIVERSITY SEEMONS. 

SERMONS DELIVERED IN BROWN UNIVERSITY. 
By Francis Wayland, D. D. 

Second Edition. 12mo. Price $1.00. 



" Fe-w sermons contain so much carefully arranged thought as these by 
Dr. Wayland. The thorough logician is apparent throughout the volume, 
and there is a classic purity in the diction unsurpassed by any writer, and 
equalled by very few." — New York Commercial Advertiser. 

" They are the careful production of a matured and powerful intellect, 
and were addressed to a thinking and well-informed audience, and are 
especially adapted for the educated and thoughtful man." — Chr. Alliance, 

" No thinking man can open to any portion of it without finding his atten 
tion strongly arrested, and feeling inclined to yield "his assent to those self 
evincing statements which appear on every page. As a writer, Dr. Way- 
land is distinguished by simplicity, strength and comprehensiveness. Ha 
addresses himself directly to the intellect more than to the imagination, to 
the conscience more than to the passions. Yet, through the intellect and 
the conscience, he often reaches the depths of our emotive nature, and 
rouses it by words of power. We commend these sermons to all students 
of moral and religious truth, to all lovers of sound thought conveyed in 
elegant diction." — Watchman <^ Reflector. • 

" The discourses contained in this handsome volume are characterized by 
all that richness of thought and elegance of language for which their tal- 
ented author is celebrated. The whole volume is Avell worthy of the pen 
of the distinguished scholar and divine from whom it emanates. — 
Dr. Baird's Cliristimi Union. 



SACRED RHETORIC: 

Ovy Composition and Delivery of Sermons. 

By Henry J. Ripley, Prof, in Newton Theological Institution. 

IndtLding Ware's Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching. 
12ino. Price 75 Cent8. 

" An admirably prepared work, clear and succinct in its positions and 
recommendations, soundly based on good authority, and well supported by 
a variety of reading and illustrations. It is well adapted for a healthy dis- 
cipline of the faculty, and there are few preachers who might not with profit 
revise their practice by its pages. It is worthy, too, of being a companion 
to Whately, in the general study of Rhetoric." — N. Y. Literary World. 

"Prof. Ripley possesses the highest qiaalifications for a work of this 
kind. His position has given him great experience in the peculiar wants 
of theological students." — Providence Journal. 

"His canons on selecting texts, stating the proposition, collecting and 
arrangmg materials, style, delivery, etc., are just and well stated. Every 
theological student to whom this volume is accessible, will be likely to 
procure it. — Christian 3firror, Portland. 

" This work belongs among the substantials of our literature. It is man- 
ifestly the fruit of mature thought and large observation; it is pervaded 
by a manly tone, and abounds injudicious counsels; it is compactly writ- 
ten and admirably arranged, both for study and reference. It will become 
a text book for theological students, we have no doubt; — that it deserves 
to be read by all ministers who can avail themselves of it, and especially 
by all yoimg ministers, is to us as clear. — N. Y. Recorder. 



EEPUBLICAN CHRISTIANITY: 

OR TRUE LIBERTY; 

As Exhibited in Hie Life, Precepts, and Early Disciples of the Great Bedeemer. 

By E. L. M A G o o i^ . 

12mo. Price $1.25. 

" It is adapted to the spirit of the times. It meets and answers the great 
inquiry of the present day. It describes clearly the coiTuptions of past 
times, the imperfections of the present, and the changes that must be 
effected in the forms and spirit of religion, and through religion upon the 
State, to secure to us better and brighter prospects for the future. The 
author is not afraid to expose and condemn the errors and corruptions, 
either of the Church or State." — Christian Watchman. 

" Mr. M. has at his command a rich store of learning, from which he skil- 
fully draws abundant evidence for the support of the positions he assumes." 
Boston Recorder. 

*' It is a very readable, and we think will prove a useful book. The ar- 
gument is clear and well sustained, and the style bold and direct. The 
tone and spirit of the entire work are that of an independent thinker, and 
of a man whose sympathies are with the many and not with the few, with 
no privileged class, but with the human race. We commend this book to 
all lovers of true liberty and of a pure Christianity." — Providence Journal. 

" Mr. Magoon is known as one of the most glowing and impressive orators 
among the Baptist Clergy. He thinks boldly and speaks frankly, and 
with a variety and freshness of illustration that never fail to command 
attention." — New Yo^^Tc Trihmie. 

" He considers Christianity in all its parts as essentially republican. He 
has maintained his position with great tact. He abounds in illustrations 
which are often exceedingly beautiful and forcible. All the peculiarities 
of his style appear in this new work, which will generally be regarded as 
the best that he has produced. It is a clear, striking, attractive, presenta- 
tion of his views and the reasons for them. It will excite attention, both 
from the subject itself and from the manner in which it is handled." 
Philadelphia Chronicle. 

" This book is one which the masses will read with avidity, and its pe- 
rusal, we think, will fire up the zeal of some Christian Scholars.''^ — Baptist 
Memorial. 



PEOYEEBS FOE THE PEOPLE: 

Or, Illustrations of Practical Godliness dravm from the Book of Wisdom. 

BY E. L. MAGOON. 

12mo. Price 90 cents. 

" He is quaint, sententious, — he has indeed the three great qualities, * pith, 

?oint and pathos,' — and always enforces high and noble sentiments." — 
Tew York Recorder. 

" It is a popular manual of great practical utility." — CJu Chronicle Phila. 

" The subjects are so selected as to embrace nearly all the practical duties 
of life. The work, in consequence of this peculiar character, will be found 
extensively useful." — Rochester Democrat. 

" The work abounds with original and pithy matter, well adapted to en- 
gage the attention and to reform the life. We hope these discourses will be 
extensively read." — Morning Star, Dover. 

" K is an excellent book for young people, and especially for young men, 
amidst the temptations of business and pleasure." — Albamj Express. 



O 



CLASSICAL STUDIES. 

ESSAYS ON 

ANCIENT LITERATURE AND ART. 

With the Biography and Correspondenct of Eminent Philologists. 

B7 Barnas Sears, President of Newton Theol. Institution, B. B. 

Edwards, Prof. Andover Theol. Seminary, and C. C. Felton, 

Prof. Harvard University. 12mo. Price $1.25. 

SECOND THOUSAND. 

" The collection is a most attractive one, and would be acceptable in any circum- 
stances. The discourses, particularly those of Jacobs, are written in words that burn. 
A general could not exhort his troops with more energy and spirit, than are used 
by the German Professor in stimulating the youth before him to labor in the acqui- 
sition of classical learning. The biographical portions of the book, naturally less 
exciting, no less tend to the same end." — London Lit. Examiner, by John Forster, Esq. 

" This elegant book is worthy of a more extended notice than our limits at present 
will permit us to give it. Great labor and care have been bestowed upon its typo- 
graphical execution, wliich does honor to the American press. It is one of the rare 
beauties of the page, that not a word is divided at the end of a line. The mechanical 
part of the work, however, is its least praise. It is unique in its character — standing 
alone among the innumerable books of this book-making age. The authors well 
deserve the thanks of the cultivated and disciplined porticn of the community, for the 
service which, by tliis publication, they have done to the cause of letters. The book 
is of a high order, and worthy of the attentive perusal of every scholar. It is a noble 
monument to the taste, and judgment, and sound learning of the projectors, and will 
yield, we doubt not, a rich harvest of fame to themselves, and of benefit to our 
literature.'' — Christia}i Review. 

" It is refreshing, truly, to sit down with such a book as this. When the press is 
teeming with the hasty works of authors and publishers, it is a treat to take up a book 
that is an honor, at once, to the arts and the literature of our country." — JVew York 
Observer. 

" This is truly an elegant volume, both in respect to its literary and its mechanical 
execution. Its typographical appearance is an honor to the American press ; and with 
equal truth it may be said, that the intrinsic character of the work is highly credit- 
able to the age. It is a novel work, and may be called a plea for classical learning. 
To scholars it must be a treat 5 and to students we heartily commend it." — Boston 
Recorder. 

" This volume is no common-place production. It is truly refreshing, wnen we are 
obliged, from week to week, to look through the mass of books which increases upon 
our table, many of which are extremely attenuated in thought and jejune in style, to 
find something which carries us back to the pure and invigorating influence of the 
master minds of antiquity. The gentlemen who have produced this volume deserve 
the cordial thanks of the literary world." — JVew En<rlaiid Puritan. 

" We heartily welcome this book as admirably adapted to effect a most noble and 
much desired result. Wo commend the work to general attention, for we feel sure it 
mustido much to awaken a zeal for classical studies, as the surest means of attaining 
the refinement and graceful dignity which should mark the strength of every nation." — 
JVew York Tribune. 

♦' We make no classical pretensions, or we might say more about the principal 
articles in this volume ; but it needs no such pretensions to commend, as we heartily 
do, a book so full of interest and instruction as the present, for every reader who is ut 
all imbued with a love of literature." — Salem Gazette. 

"This book will do good in our colleges. Every student will want a copy, and 
many will be stimulated by its perusal to a more vigorous and enthusiastic pursuit of 
tliat higher and more solid learning which alone deserves to be called 'classical.' 
The recent tendencies have been to the neglect of this, and we rejoice in this timely 
eflfort of minds so well qualified for such a work." — Christian Reflector. 

•' The volume is, in every way, a beautiful aflTair of its kind, and we hazard nothing 
"in recommending it to the literary world.' — Christian Secretary, Hartford. 

" The design is a noble and generous one, and has been executed with a taste and 
food sense, that do honor both to the writers and the publishe/s." — Prov. Journal. 



CATALOGUE 

OF VALUABLE WORKS, PUBLISHED BT 

GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, 

No. 59 "Washington Street, 
BOSTON. 



The attention of the public is invited to an examination of tlie merits of the worka 
described in this Catalogue, embracing valuable contributions to General Literature 
Science, and Theology. 

Besides their own Publications, they have a general assortment of Books, in the 
Tarious departments of literature, and can supply every thing in their line of business 
on the lowest terms, wholesale and retail. 



PRINCIPLES OF ZOOLOGY; Touching the Stracture, Develop- 
ment, Distribution, and Natural Arrangement of the Kaces of Animals, 
living and extinct, with numerous illustrations. For the use of Schools 
and Colleges. Part I., Compakative Physiology. By Louis Agassiz 
and Augustus A. Gould. 

Extracts from the Preface. 

" The design of this work is to furnish an epitome of the leading principles of the science 
of Zoology, as deduced from the present state of knowledge, so illustrated as to be intelligible 
to the beginning student. No similar treatise now existsin this country, and indeed, some 
of the topics have not been touched upon in the language, unless in a strictly technical 
form, and in scattered articles." 

" Being designed for American students, the illustrations have been drawn, as far as pos- 
sible, from American objects. * * * Popular names have been employed as far as possible, 
and to the scientific names an English termination has generally been given. The first part 
is devoted to Comparative Physiology, as the basis of Classification ; the second, to System- 
atic Zoology, in which the principles of Classification will be applied, and the principal 
groups of animals briefly characterized." 

MODERN FRENCH LITERATTTRE; By L. Raymond De Veri- 

couR, formerly lecturer in the Royal Athenasum of Paris, member of the 
Institute of France, &c. American edition, brought bown to the present 
day, and revised w^ith notes by William S. Chase. With a fine portrait 
of Lamartine. 

%* This Treatise has received the highest praise as a comprehensive and thorough survey 
of the various departments of Modern French Literature. It contains biographical and 
critical notes of all the prominent names in Philosophy, Criticism, History, Romance, 
Poetry, and the Drama; and presents a full and impartial consideration of the Political 
Tendencies of France, as they may be traced in the writings of authors equally conspicu- 
ous as Scholars and as Statesmen. Mr. Chase, who has been the Parisian correspondent of 
several leading periodicals of this country, is well qualified, from a prolonged residence in 
France, his familiarity with its Literature, and by a personal acquaintance with many of 
these authors, to introduce the work of De Vericour to the American public. 

"This is the only complete treatise of the kind on this subject, either in French or Eng- 
lish, and has received the highest commendation. Mr. Chase is well qualified to introduce 
the work to the public. The book cannot fail to be both useful and popular." — New Y^rk 
Evening Post. 

" Literature and Politics are more closely allied than many are aware of. It is particu- 
larly so in France ; and the work announced by this learned French writer will, doubtless, 
be eagerly sought after."— The Symbol, Boston. 

" Mr. Chase is entirely competent for the task he has undertaken in the present instance 
His introduction and notes have doubtless added much to the value of the work, especially 
to the American reader."— Evening Oazette, Boston. 



O 



iJahmbU Sdjool i3ook0. 



THE ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE. By Francis 
Wayland, D.D. President of Brown University, and Professor of 
Moral Philosopliy. fortieth Thousand. 12mo. cloth. Price $1.25. 

%* This work has been extensively and favorably reviewed and adopted as a class-book 
In most of the collegiate, theological, and academical institutions of the country. 

From Rev. Wilbur Fisk, President of tlut W,devan Univernty. 
" I have examined it with great satisfaction and interest. The work was greatly needed, 
and is well executed. Dr. Wayland deserves the grateful acknowledgments and liberal 
patronage of the public. I need say nothing further to express my high estimate of tha 
work, than that we shall immediately adopt it as a text-book in our university." 

From Hon. James Kent, late Chancellor of New York. 
" The work has been read by me attentively and thoroughly, and I think very highly of 
it The author himself is one of the most estimable of men, and I do not know of any 
ethical treatise, in which our duties to God and to our fcUow-men'are laid down with more 
precision, simphcity, clearness, energy, and truth." 

" The work of Dr. TVayland has arisen gradually from the necessity of correcting the 
false principles and fallacious reasonings of Paley. It is a radical mistake, in the ed'i<'»- 
tion of youth, to permit any book to be used by students as a text-book, which contains 
earoneous doctrines, especially when these are fuudameutal, and tend to vitiate the whole 
system of morals. We have "been greatly pleased with the method which President Way- 
land has adopted ; he goes back to the simplest and most fundamental principles ; and, in 
the statement of his views, he unites perspicuity with concisei ess and precision. In all 
the author's leading fundamental principles we entirely concur." — Biblical Repository, 

" This is a new work on morals, for academic use, and we welcome it with much satis- 
faction. It is the result of several years' reflection and experience in teaching, on the part 
of its justly distinguished author ; and if it is not perfectly what we could wish, yet, in the 
most important respects, it supplies a want which has been extensively felt. It is, we 
think, substantially sound in its fundamental principles ; and being comprehensive and 
elementary in its plan, and adapted to the purposes of instruction, it will be gladly adopted 
by those who have for a long time been dissatisfied with the existing works of Paley." 

The Literary and Theological Review. 

MORAL SCIENCE, ABRIDGED, by the Author, and adapted 
to the use of Schools and Academies. Twenty-fifth Tliousand. 18mo. 
half cloth. Price 25 cents. 

The more effecliiallj' to meet the desire expressed for a cheap edition, the present ediUon is isHued 
at the reduced price of 25 cents per copy, and it is hoped thereby to extend the benefit of moral in- 
•truction to all the youth of our l.mU. Teacliers and all olliers engaged in the training of youth, are 
invited to eiaraine tiiis work. 



" Dr. Wayland has ptiblished an abridgment of his work, for the use of schools. Of 
this step we can hardly speak too highly. It is more than time that the study of moral 
philosophy should be introduced into all our institutions of education. We are happy to 
see the way so auspiciously opened for such an introduction. It has been not merely- 
abridged, but also re-written. We cannot but regard the labor aa well bestowed." — iVortft 
Aiit£ric<in Review. 

" We speak that we do know, when we express our high estimate of Dr. Wayland's 
ibility in teaching Moral Philosophy, whether orally or by the book. Having listened to 
his instructions, in this interesting department, we can attest how lofty are the principles, 
how exact and severe the argumentation, how appropriate and strong the illustrationa 
which characterize his system^and enforce it on the mind." — T/ie Christian TJltness. 

" The work of which this volume is an abridgment, is well known aa one of the best and 
mo=t complete works on Moral Philosophy extant The author is well known as one of 
the n.ost »)rofound scholars of the age. That the study of Moral Science, a science which 
teaches 300. /«£.«, should be a branch of education, not only in our colleges, but in our 
schools and academies, we believe will not be denied. The abridgment of this work 
seems to us admirably calculated for the purpose, and we hope it will be extensively 
applied to the purposes for which it is intended." — Tfie Mercantdf, Journal. 

■We hail the abridgment as admirably adapted to supply the deficiency which has long 
been felt in common school education, — the study of moral obligation. Let the child 
"o-i -»,„ taught the relations it sustains to man and to its Maker, the first acawuinting it 
-.►• .ho duties owed to societv, the secr)nd with the duties ow.mI to God. >in>) Wi"» fan 
toreteil now manv a sad and disastrous overthrow of character will be proven r*-n, and how 
elevated and puie will be the sense of integrity and virtue ir" — Evening Gazette. 



i)alnable JSdjOol Books. 



ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. By Francis 
Wayland, D.D., President of Brown University. Fifteenth" Thousand. 
12mo. cloth. Price $1.25 

" His object has been to vrrit« a book, which any one who chooses may understand. H« 
has, therefore, labored to express the general principles iu the plainest manner possible, 
«nd to illustrate them by cases with which everj' person is familiar. It has been to th« 
author a source of regret, that the course of discussion in the following pages, has, una» 
voidably, led him over ground which has frequently been the arena of poUtical contro« 
versy. In all such cases, he has endeavored to state what seemed to him to be truth, 
■without fear, favor, or affection. He is conscious to himself of no bias towards any party 
■whatever, and he thinks that he who ^^-ill read the whole work, will be con^vinced that h» 
hao been influenced by none." — Extract from the Freface. 

POLITICAL ECONOMY, ABRIDGED, by the Author, anA 
adapted to the use of Schools and Academies. Seventh Thousand. 
18mo. half morocco. Price 50 cents. 

*»* The success ■which has attended the abridgment of " The Elements of Moral 
Science " has induced the author to prepare an abridgment of this work. In this case, 
as in the other, the work has been wholly re-written, and an attempt has been made to 
adapt it to the attainments of youth. 

" The original work of the author, on Political Economy, has already been noticed on 
our pages ; and the present abridgment stands in no need" of a recommendation from us. 
We may be permitted, however, to say, that both the rising and risen generations are 
deeply indebted to Dr. Wayland, for the skill and power he has put forth to bring a highly 
important subject distinctly before them, within such narrow limits. Though ' abridged 
for the use of academies,' it deserves to be introduced into every private family, and to be 
studied by every man who has an interest in the wealth and prosperity of his country. It 
is a subject little understood, even practically, by thousands, and still less understood 
theoretically. It is to be hoped, this will form a class-book, and be faithfully studied in 
our academies ; and that it will find its way into every family library ; not there to be 
shut up unread, but to afford rich material for thought and discussion in the family 
circle. It is fitted to enlarge the mind, to purify the judgment, to correct erroneous 
popular impressions, and assist every man in forming opinions of public measures, 
"Which will abide the test of time and experience." — Boston Recorder. 

" An abridgment of this clear, common sense work, designed for the use of academics 
is just published. "We rejoice to see such treatises spreading amon^ the people ; and we 
urge ail who would be intelligent freemen, to read them." — 2tew York Transcript. 

"We can say, with safety, that the topics are well selected and arranged; tliat the 
author's name is a guarantee for more than usual excellence. We wish it an extensive 
circulation." — iVew York Observer, 

" It is well adapted to high schools, and embraces the soundest system of republican 
political economy of any treatise extant." — Daily Advocate. 

THOTTGHTS on the present Collegiate System in the United States. 
By Fkancis Watland, D.D. Price 60 cents. 

" These Thoughts come from a source entitled to a very respectful attention ; and as the 
author goes over the whole ground of collegiate education, criticising freely all the arrange- 
ments in every department and in all their bearings, the book is very fuU of matter. Wo 
hope it will prove the beginning of a thorough discussion." 

PALEY'S NATTTEAL THEOLOGY. Illustrated by forty plates, 
and Selections from the notes of Dr. Paxton, with additional Notes, 
original and selected, for this edition ; with a vocabulary of Scientific 
Terms. Edited by John Wake, M.D. 12mo. sheep. Price $1.25. 

•* The "work before ns is one which deserves rather to be studied than merelv read. 
Indeed, -without diligent attention and study, neither the excellences of it can be fully dis- 
covered, nor its advantages reaUzed. It is, therefore, gratifying to find it introduced, as a 
text-book, into the colleges and literary institutions of our country. The edition before ue 
it superior to any we have seen, and, we believe, superior to any that has yet been pub- 
lished." — Spirit of the Pilgrims. 

"Perhaps no one of our author's works gives greater satisfaction to all classes of readers, 
the young and the old, the ignorant and the enlightened. Indeed, we recollect no book in 
which the arguments for the existence and attributes of the Supreme Being, to be drawn 
from his works are exhibited in a manner more attractive and more convincing." 

Christian Examiner. 



O 



l)alttable jSdjOol J3ook0, 



THE YOUNG LADIES' CLASS BOOK. A Selection of 
Lessons for Reading in Prose and Verse. By E. Bailey, A.M.. 
late Principal of the Young Ladies' High School, Boston. Stereotyped 
Edition. 12ino. sheep. Price S<iH cents. 

From the Principals q/ tJie Fvblic Schools for Females, Boston. 
" Gextlemex:— We have examined the Young Ladies' Class Book with interest and 
pleasure ; witli interest, because we have felt the want of a Reading Book expressly le- 
eigned for the use of females ; and with pleasure, because we have found it well adapted 
to supply the deficiency. In the selections for a Reader designed for boys, the eloquence 
of the bar, the pulpit, and the forum may be laid under heavy contribution; but such, 
selections, we conceive, are out of place in a book designed for females. We have been 
pleased, therefore, to observe, that in the Young Ladies' Class Book such pieces are rare. 
The high-toned morality, the freedom from sectarianism, the taste, richness, and adapta- 
Uon of the selections, added to tlie neatness of its external appearance, must commend it to 
all; while the practical teacher will not fail to observe that diversity of style, together with 
those peculiar i>oi««s, the want of which, few, who have not felt, kaow how to supply. 

Respectfully yours, Bakkom Field, Abeaham Andrews, 

R, G. Paekek, Chakles Fox" 

From the Principal of the Mount Vemosi School, Boston. 

" I have examined with much interest the Young Ladies' Class Book, by Mr. Bailey 
and have been very highly pleased with its contents. It is my intention to introduce it 
into my own school ; as I regard it as not only remarkably well fitted to answer its particu- 
lar object as a book of exercises in the art of elocution, but as calculated to have an influ- 
ence upon the character and conduct, which will be in every rcopect favorable. 

Jacob Abbott." 

" We were never so struck with the importance of having reading books for female 
echools, adapted particularly to that express purpose, as while looking over the pages of 
this selection. The eminent success of the compiler in teaching this branch, to which we 
can personally bear testimony, is sufficient evidence of the character of the work, consid- 
ered as a selection of lessons in elocution ; they are, in general, admirably adapted to 
cultivate the amiable and gentle traits of the female character, as well as to elevate and 
improve the mind." — Annals of Fducation. 

" The reading books prepared for academic use, are often unsuitable for females. "We 
are glad, therefore, to perceive that an attempt has been made to supply the deficiency ; and 
we believe that the task has been faithfully and successfullj' accomplished. The selections 
are judicious and chaste ; and so far as they have any moral bearing, appear to be unex- 
ceptionable." — Educ<ition Reporter. 

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES AND ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 

By C. K. Dillaway, A.M., late Principal in the Boston Latin SchooL 
With Engravings. Eighth Ed., improved. 12nio. half mor. Price 67 cts. 

From E. BaiJey, Principal of the Young Ladies' High School, Boston. 

" 'Haxing used Dillawap's Roman Antiquities and Ancient Mythology in my school for 
several years, I commend it to teachers with great confidence, as a valuable text-book on 
those interesting branches of education. E. Bailey.' 

" The want of a cheap volume, embracing a succinct account of ancient customs, 
together with a view of classical mythology, has long been felt To the student of a lan- 
guage, some knowledge of the manners, habits, and religious feelings of the people whose 
language is studied is indispensably requisite. This knowledge is seldom to be obtained 
without tedious research or laborious investigation. Mr. Dillaway's book seems to have 
been prepared with special reference to the wants of those who are just entering upon a 
classical career; and we deem it but a simple act of justice to say, that it supplies the 
want, which, as we have before said, has long been felt. In a small duodecimo, of about 
one hundred and fifty pa^es, he concentrates the most valuable and interesting particulars 
relating to Roman antiquity ; together with as full an account of heathen mythology as is 
generally needed in our highest seminaries. A peculiar merit of this compilation, and 
one which will gain it admission into our highly respectable /emafe seminaries, is the total 
fcbsence of all allusion, even the most remote, to the disgusting obscenities of ancient 
mythology ; while, at the same time, nothing is omitted which a pure mind would feel 
interested to know. We recommend the book as a valuable addition to the treatises in 
our schools and academics." — Education Reporter, Boston. 

" We well remember, in the days of our pupilage, how unpopular as a study was the 
volume of Roman Antiquities introduced in the academic course. It wearied on account 
of its prolixity, filling a thick octavo, and was the prescribed task each afternoon for a 
long three months. It was reserved for one of our Boston instructors to apply the con- 
densing apparatus to this mass of crudities, and so to modernize the antiquities of the old 
Romans, as to make a befitting abridgment for schools of the first order. Mr. Dillaway has 
presented such a compilation as must be interesting to lads, and become popular as a text- 
book, nistoriccl facts are stated with great simplicity and clearness ; the most important 
PMuts are seised upon, while trifling peculiarities axe passed unnoticed."— ^m. TravelUr, 



t)aluable Srtjoot Booka. 



BLAKE'S FIRST BOOK IN ASTEONOMY. Designed for \ 
the Use of Common Schools. By J. L. Blake, D.D. Illustrated by I 
Steel Plate Engravings. 8vo. cloth back. Price 50 cents. I 

From E. Hinckley, Professor of Matliematics in Maryland University, 
" I a^fi much indebted to you for a copy of the First Book in Astronomy. It is a -work i 

of utility and merit, far superior to any other which I have seen. The author has selected 
his topics with great judgniejit, — arranged them in admirable order, — exhibited them in ' 

a style and manner at once tasteful and philosophical. Nothing seems wanting, — nothing . 

redundant It is truly a very beautiful and attractive book, calculated to afford both 
pleasure and profit to all who may enjoy the advantage of perusing it." ; 

From B. Field, PrincipaZ of the Hancock School, Boston. 
*' I know of no other work on Astronomy so well calculated to interest and instrad 
young learners in this sublime science." 

From James F. Gould, AJW., Principal of the High School for Young Ladies, 

Baltimore, Md, 
" I shall introduce your First Book in Astronomy into my Academy in September, 
consider it decidedly superior to any elementary work of the kind I have ever seen." 

From Isaac Foster, Instructor of Youth, Portland. 
" I have examined Blake's First Book in Astronomy, and am much pleased with it. A 
Tery happy selection of topics is presented in a manner which cannot fail to interest the 
learner, while the questions will assist him materially in fixing in the memory what ought 
to be retained. It leaves the most intricate parts of the subject for those who are able to 
master them, and brings before the young pupil only what can be made intelligible and 
interesting to him." 

_ " The illustrations, both pictorial and verbal, are admirably intelligible ; and the defini- 
tions are such as to be easily comprehended by juvenile scholars. The author has inter- 
woven with his scientific instructions much interesting historical information, and con- 
trived to dress his philosophy in a garb truly attractive. — 3". Y. Daily Evening Journal. 

" We are free to say, that it is, in our opinion, decidedly the best work we have any 
knowledge of, on the sublime and interesting subject of Astronomy. The engravings are 
executed in a superior style, and the mechanical appearance of the book is extremely 
prepossessing. The knowledge imparted is in language at once chaste, elegant, and 
simple — adapted to the comprehension of those for whom it was designed. The subject 
matter is selected with great judgment, and evinces uncommon industry and research. 
We earnestly hope that parents and teachers will examine and judge for themselves, as 
we feel confident they will coincide with us in opinion. We only hope the circulation of 
the work will be commensurate with its merits." — Boston Evening Gazette. 

" The book now before us contains forty-two short lessons, -ftith a few additional ones 
■which are appended in the form of problems, with a design to exercise the young learner 
in finding out the latitude and longitude on the terrestrial globe. We do not hesitate to 
recommend it to the notice of the superintending committees, teachers, and pupils of our 
public schools. The definitions in the first part of the volume are given in brief and clear 
language, adapted to the understanding of beginners."— 5<afe Herald, Portsmouth, y. H. 

BIAKE'S NATTJRAL PHILOSOPHY. Being Conversations on 
Philosophy, with the addition of Explanatory Notes, Questions for Exami- 
nation, and a Dictionary of Philosophical Terms. With twentj'-eight steel 
Engravings. By J. L. Blake, D.D. 12mo. sheep. Price 67 cents. 

*** Perhaps no work has contributed so much as this to excite a fondness for the study 
of Natural Philosophy in youthful minds. The familiar comparisons, with which it 
abounds, awaken interest, and rivet the attention of the pupil. 

From Rev. J. Adams, President of Charleston College, S. O, 
"I have been highly gratified with the perusal of your edition of Conversations on 
Natural Philosophy. The Questions, Notes, and Explanations of Terms, are valuable 
additions to the work, and make this edition superior to any other with wlxich I am 
acquainted. I shall recommend it wherever I have an opportunity." 

" We avail ourselves of the opportunity furnished us by the publication of a new edition 
of this deservedly popular work, to recommend it, not only to those instructors who may 
not already have adopted it, but also generally to all readers who are desirous of obtaining 
infcrmation on the subjects on which it treats. By Questions arranged at t)ie bottom of 
the pages, in which the collateral facts are arranged", he directs the attention of the learner 
to the principal topics. Mr. Blake has also added many Notes, which illustrate the pas- 
sages to which they are appended, and the Dictionary of Philosophical Terms is a useful 
addition." —U.S. Literary Oasette. 



O 



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THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH: Contributions to Theological Science. 
Price 85 cents. 

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him in a new position to survey the wonders of God's works ; and compels Natural Sci- 
ence to bear her decided testimony in support of Divine Truth." — Fhila. Ck. Observer, 

MAN PRIMEVAL; Or, the Constitution and Primitive Condition of the 
Human Being. A Contribution to Theological Science. With a finely- 
engraved portrait of the author; 12mo. cloth, price $1.25. 

*** This is the second volume of a series of works on Theological Science. The first wai 
received with much favor — the present is a continuation of the principles which were 
Been holding their way through the successive kingdoms of primeval nature, and axe herd 
resumed and exhibited in their next higher application to individual man. 

" His copious and beautiful illustrations of the successive laws of the Divine Manifestft- 
Gon, have yielded us inexpressible delight." — Lotxdon Eclectic Review. 

THE GREAT COMMISSION; Or, the Christian Church constituted 
and charged to convey the Gospel to the World. A Prize Essay. With 
an Introductory Essay, by W. R. Williams, D.D. Price $1.00 

" Of the several productions of Dr. Harris, — all of them of great value, —that now before 
OS is destined, probably, to exert the most powerful influence in forming the religious and 
missionary character of the coming generations. But the vast fund of argument and in- 
struction comprised in these pages will excite the admiration and inspire the gratitude 
of thousands in our own land as well as in Europe. Every clergyman and pious and re- 
flecting layman ought to possess the volume, and make it faniiliar by repeated perusaL" 

Boston liecorder. 

" His plan is original and comprehensive. In filling it up, the author has interwoven facts 
with rich and glowing illustrations, and with trains of thought that are sometimes almost 
resistless in their appeals to the conscience. The work is not more distinguished for its 
arguments and its genius, than for the spirit of deep and fervent piety that pervades it." 

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THE GREAT TEACHER; Or, Characteristics of our Lord's Ministry. 
With an Introductory Essay, by H. Humphrey, D.D. Tenth thousand. 
Price 85 cents. 

" The book itself must have cost much meditation, much communion on the bosom of 
Jesus, and much prayer. Its style is, like the country which gave it birth, beautiful, varied, 
finished, and everywhere delightful. But the style of this work is its smallest excellence. 
It will be read : it ought to be read. It will find its way to many parlors, and add to the 
comforts of many a happy fireside. The reader will rise from each chapter, not able, per- 
haps, to carry with him many striking remarks or apparent paradoxes, but he will have a 
sweet impression made upon his soul, Tike that which soft and touching music makes when 
every thing about it is appropriate. The writer pours forth a clear and beautiful light, like 
that of the evening light-house, when it sheds its rays upon the sleeping waters, and 
covers them with a surface of gold. We can have no sympathy with a heart which yields 
not to impressions delicate and holy, which the perusal of this work will naturally make." 

Hampshire Gazette. 

miscellanies; Consisting principally of Sermons and Essays. With 
an Introductory Essay and Notes, by J. Belchek, D.D. Price 75 cents. 

" Some of these essays are among the finest in the language ; and the warmth and energy 
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ure of the closet and the Cliristian fireside."— Bangor Gazette. 

MAMMON ; Or, Covetousness, the Sin of the Christian Church. A Prize 
Essay. Price 45 cents. Twentieth thousand. 

%* This masterly work has already engaged the attention of churches and individuals, 
and receives the highest commendations. 

ZEBULON ; Or the Moral Claims of Seamen stated and enforced. Edited 
by Eev. W. M. Rogers and D. M. Lord. Price 25 cents. 

*#* A well written and spirit-stirring appeal to Christians in favor of this numerous, use- 
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THE ACTIVE CHRISTIAN; Containing the *' Witnessing Church," 
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THE APOSTOLICAL AND PRIMITIVE CHURCH ; Popular in 
its government and simple in its worship. By Lyman Coleman. With 
an introductory essay, by Dr. Augustus Nkandek, of Berhn. Second 
Edition. Price $1.25. 

The Publishers have been favored 'with many highly commendatory notices of this 
work, from individuals and public journals. The first edition found a rapid sale; it has 
been republished in England, and received with much favor ; it is universally pronounced 
to be standard authority on this subject; and is adopted as a Text Book, in Theological 
Seminaries. 

From the professors in ^indover Theological Seminary. 

" The undersigned are pleased to hear that you are soon to publish a new edition of the 
'Primitive Church,' by Lyjiax Coleman. They regard this volume as the result of 
extensive and original research j as embodying very important materials for reference, 
much sound thought and conclusive argument. In their estimation, it may both interest 
and instruct the intelligent layman, may be profitably used as a Text Book for Theologi- 
cal Students, and should especially form a part of the libraries of clergymen. The intro- 
duction, by Neakdek, is of itself sufficient to recommend the volume to the literary 
public." Leoxakd Woods, Bela B. Edwards, 

Eali>h Emersox, Edward A. Park. 

THE CHURCH MEMBER'S HAND BOOK; A Guide to the 
Doctrines and Practice of Baptist Churches. By Rev. William 
Crowell. 18mo. Cloth. Price 37^ cents. Contents — Chapter I, 
The Ground Work of Religion; Christian Truth. II. The Frame 
"Work of Religion ; Christian Churches. III. The Memorials of Reli- 
gion ; Christian Ordinances. IV. The Symbols of Religion ; Christian 
Sacraments. V. The Privileges of Religion ; Christian Exercises. 
VI. The Duties of Religion; Church Discipline. VII. The Life of 
Religion ; Christian Love. 

*' We have never met with a book of this size that contained so full and complete a synopsis of the 
Doctrines and Practice of the Baptist, or any other church, as this. Mr. Crowell is one of the ablest 
writers in the denomination, and if there is a subject in the whole range of Chrisiiaiiiiy which he is 
pre-eminently qualified to discuss, it is the one before ns. The ' Hand Book ' is not an abridojment 
of the ' Church Member's Manual,' by the same author, but is written expressly as a brief, plain 
guide to young members of the church. It appears- to have been prepared with much care and labor, 
and is just such a book as is needed by every young church member; we might salely add, and by 
most of the older meinhsrs in the denominaiion ; for there is a vast amount of iufL-rmaliun iu it that 
will be found of practical use to all." — Christian Secretary, Hartford. 

" It is concise, clear, and comprehensive; and, as an exposition of ecclesiastical principles and prac- 
tice, is worthy of careful study of all the youujr members of oiu' churches. We hope it niay tie widely 
circulated, and that the youthful thousands of our Israel may become familiar with its pages." — WaicK- 
man and Refeclor. 

THE CHURCH IN EARNEST; By Joii» Akgell James. 18mo. 

cloth ; price 50 cents. 

" A very seasonable publication. The church universal needs a re-nwakoning to its high 
vocation, and this is a book to eftect, so far as human intellect can, the much desired resus- 
citation." — 3'. Y. Com. Adv. „, , .^^ , 

" AVe are glad to see that this subject has arrested the pen of Mr. James, ue welcome 
and commend it. Let it be scattered like auttimn leaves. _We believe its perusal will do 
much to impress a conviction of the high mission of the Christian, and much to arouse the 
Christian to fultil it." — X. T. Recorder. 

"We rejoice that tliis work has beeu republished in this country, and we cannot too 
stronglv commend it to the serious perusal of the churches of every jiame." — AUiance. 

" Mr" James's writings all have one object, to do execution. He writes tinder the impulse 

Do something, do it. He studies not to be a profound or learned, but a p-.-actical writer. 

He aims to raise Uie standard of piety, holine.ss in the heart, and hoUness of life. The influ- 
ence which this work will exert on the church must be liighly salutary." — Boston Recorder. 

THE CHURCH MEMBER'S GUIDE, By Rev. J. A. James. Edited 
by Rev. J. 0. Choules. New Edition ; with an Introductory Essay, by 
Rev. Hubbard Wi:nslow. Price 88 cents. 

A pastor writes — "I sincerely wish that every professor of religion in the land may 
possess this excellent manual. I am anxious that every member of my church should 
possess it, and shall be happy to promote its circulation still more extensively." 

" The spontaneous elfiision of our heart, on laying the book down, was, — may every 
church-member in our land soon possess this book, and be blessed with all the happiness 
which couforuiity to its evangelic sentiments and directions is calculated to confer." 

Chribtian Sccietat^. 



o 



GOULD, KENDALL, AND LINCOLN'S PUBLICATIONS. 

iUcm^it^ of Di$imijt\l$5c^ illi$$ton(tn^$. 

MEMOIR OF ANN H. JUDSON, late Missionary to Burraah. By Rev. 
Jamks D. Kxowlks. 12mo. E<lition, price 85 cents. ISmo., price 58 cts. 

" We nre particularly gratified to perceive a new edition of the Memoirs of Mrs. Judson. 
She was an honor to our country — one of the most noble-spirited of her sex. It cannot, 
therefore, be surprising, that so many editions, and so many thousand copies of her life and 
adventures have been sold. The name — the long career of suffering — the self-sacrificing 
spirit of the retired country -girl, have spread over the whole world; and the heroism of her 
apostleship and almost martyrdom, stands out a living and heavenly beacon-fire, amid the 
dark midnight of ages, and human history and exploits. She was the first woman who 
resolved to become a missionary to heathen countries." — American Traveller. 

" This is one of the most interesting pieces of female biography which has ever come nn- 
(ler our notice. No quotation, which our limits allow, would do justice to the facts, and we 
must, therefore, refer our readers to the volume itself. It ought to be immediately added to 
every family library." — London Miscctlany. 

MEMOIR OF GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, Late Missionary to 
Burmah, containing much intelligence relative to the Burman Mission. 

. By Rev. Alonzo King. A new Edition. With an Introductory Essay, 
by a distinguished Clergyman. Embellished with a Likeness; a 
beautiful Vignette, representing the baptismal scene just before his 
death ; and a drawing of his tomb, taken by Eev. H. "Malcom, D.D. 
Price 75 cents. 

" One of the brightest luminaries of Burmah is extinguished, — dear brother Boardman 
is gone to his eternal rest. He fell gloriously at the head of his troops — in the arms of vic- 
tory, — thirty-eight wild Karens having been brought into the camp of king Jesus since the 
beginning of the year, besides the thirty-two that were brought in during the two preceding 
years. Disabled by wounds, he was obliged, through the whole of the last expedition, to be 
carried on a litter ; but his presence was a host, and the Holy Spirit accompanied his 
dying whispers with almighty influence." Rev. Dk. Juusox. 

" No one can read the Memoir of Boardman, without feeling that the religion of Christ is 
suited to purify the affections, exalt the purposes, and give energy to the character. Mr. 
Boardman was a man of rare excellence, and his biographer, by a just exhibition of that 
excellence, has rendered an important service, not only to the cause of Christian missions, 
but to the interests of personal godliness." Bako:) Stow. 

MEMOIR OF MRS. HENRIETTA SHUCK, The First American 
Female Missionary to China. By Rev. J. B. Jkter. Fourth thousand. 
Price 50 cents. 

" We have seldom taken into our hands a more beautiful book than this, and we have 
no small pleasure in knowing the degree of perfection attained in this country in the arts 
of printing and book-binding, as seen in its appearance. The style of the author is sedate 
and perspicuous, such as we might expect from his known piety and learning, his attacli- 
meut to missions, and the amiable lady whose memory he embalms. The book will be ex- 
tensivelj' read and eminently useful, and thus the ends sought by the author will be hap- 
pily secured. We think we are not mistaken in this opinion : for those who taste the 
effect of earlj' education upon the exjiansion of regenerated convictions of duly and happi- 
ness. V ho are charmed with youthful, heroic self-consecration upon the altar of God, for the 
wclrare of man, and who are" interested in those struggles of mind which lend men to shut 
their eyes and ears to the importunate pleadings of filial affection —those who are interested 
in China, that large opening field for the glorious conquests of divine truth, who are inter- 
ested in the government and habits, social and business-like, of the people of this empire — 
all such will be interested in this Memoir. To them and to the friends of missions generally, 
the book is commended, as worth}' of an attentive perusal." — The Faiuilij Visiter, Boston. 

MEMOIR OF REV. WILLIAM G. CROCKER, Late Missionary in 
West Africa, among the Bassas, Including a History of the Jlission. By 
R. B. .Medbeuv. Price 62^ cents. 

" This interesting work will be found to contain much valuable information in relation to 
the present state and prospects of Africa, and the success of .Missions in that interesting 
f ountry, which has just taken a stand among the nations of the earth, and, it is to be hoped, 
ma}' successfully wield its new powers for the ultimate good of the whole continent. The 
present work is commended to' the attention of every lover of the liberties of man. 

" Our ac'inaintance with the excellent brother, who is the subject of this Memoir, will he 
long ai^d fondly cherished. This volume, prepared by a Iwhi, of true taste and talent, and 
of a, kindred spirit, while it is but a just tribute to his worth, will, we doubt not, furnish 
lessons of humble and proctical piety, and will give such facts relative to the mission to 
which he devoted his life, as to render it worthy a distinguished pla^e among the religiou6 
and missionary biography which has so much enriched the family of God."— Ch. Watchman, 



GOULD, KENDALL AKD LINCOLN'S PUBLICATIONS. 



THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE; A Collection of Discourse* 

on Christian Missions, by American Authors. Edited by Baron 
Stow, D.D. Second Thousand. Price 85 cents. 

" If we desired to put into the hands of a foreigner a fair exhibition of the capacity and 
spirit of the American church, we would give him tliis volume. You have here thrown 
together a few discourses, preached from time to time, by different individuals, of different 
denominations, as circumstances have demanded them ; and you see the stature and feel 
the pulse of the American Church in these discourses with a certainty not to be mistaken. 

'• You see the high talent of the American church. We venture the assertion, that no 
nation in the world has such an amount of forceful, available talent in its pulpit The 
energy, directness, scope, and intellectual spirit of the American church is wonderful. In 
this book, the discourses by Dr. Beecher, Pres. Wayland, and the Rev. Dr. Stone of the 
Episcopal church, are among the very highest exhibitions of logical correctness, and burn- 
ing, popular fervor. This volume will have a wide circulation."— r/ie i\ew Englander. 

" This work contains fifteen sermons on Missions, by Rev. Drs. Wayland, GriflBn, Ander- 
son, WiUiaras, Beecher, Miller, Fuller. Beman, Stone, Mason, and by Rev. Messrs. Kirk, 
Stow, and Ide. It is a rich treasure, which ought to be in the possession of every American 
Christian."— Carolina Baptist. 

THE GREAT COMMISSION; Or, the Christian Church constituted 
and charged to convey the Gospel to the World. A Prize Essay. By 
John Harris, D.D. With an Introductory Essay, by W. R. Williams, 
D.D. Fifth Thousand. Price $1.00. 

" His plan is original and comprehensive. In filling it up the author has interwoven 
facts with rich and glowing illustrations, and with trains of thought that are sometimes 
almost resistless in their appeals to the conscience. The work is not more distinguished 
for its arguments and its genius, than for the spirit of deep and fervent piety that per- 
vades iV—2'he Day spring. 

" This work comes forth in circumstances which give and promise extraordinary interest 
and value. Its general circulation will do much good." — A'ew) York Evangelist. 

"In this volume we have a work of great excellence, rich in thought and illustration of a 
subject to which the attention of thousands has been called by tiie word and providence of 
God." — Philadelphia Obso'ver. 

" The merits of the book entitle it to more than a prize of money. It constitntes a most 
powerful appeal on the subject of Missions."— A'bw York Baptist Advocate. 

" Its st^le is remarkably chaste and elegant. Its sentiments richly and fervently evan- 
gelized, its argumentation conclusive. Preachers especially should read it ; they will re- 
new their strength over its noble pages." — Zion's Herald, Boston. 

" To recommend this work to the friends of missions of all denominations would be but 
faint praise; the author deserves and will undoubtedly receive the credit of having applied 
a new lever to that great moral machine which, by the blessing of God, is destined to 
evangelize the world." — Christian Secretai-y, Hartford. 

" We hope that the volume will be attentively and prayerfully read by the whole 
church, which are clothed with the " Great Commission " to evangelize the world, and 
that they ^ill be moved to an immediate discharge of its high and momentous obligations. 

i^. E. Puritan, Boston. 

THE KAREN APOSTLE; Or, Memoir of Ko Thah-Byu, the first 
Karen convert, with notices concerning his Nation. With maps and 
plates. By the Rev. Francis Mason, Missionaiy. American Edition. 
JEdited by Prof. H. J. Eipley, of Newton Theol. Institution. Fifth Thou- 
sand. I*rice 25 cents. 

*** " This is a work of thrilling interest, containing the history of a remarkable man, and 
giving, also, much information respecting the Karen Mission, heretofore unknown in this 
country. It must be sought for, and read with avidity by those interested in this most in- 
teresting mission. It gives an account, which must be attractive, from its novelty, of a 
people that have been but little known and visited by missionaries, till within a few years» 
The baptism of Ko Thah-Byu, in 1828, was the beginning of the mission, and at the end of 
these twelve years, twelve hundred and seventy Karens are officially reported as members 
of the churches, in good standing. Tlie mission has been carried on pre-eminently by the 
Karens themselves, and there is no doubt, from much touching e-sidence contained in this 
volume, that they are a people peculiarly susceptible to religious impressions. The account 
of Mr. Mason must be interesting to every one. 

9* 



GOULD, KENDALL. AND LINCOLN'S PUBLICATIONS. 

THE FOUR GOSPELS, WITH NOTES. Chiefly Explanatory ; in- 
tended principally for Sabbath School Teachers and Bible Classes, and 
as an aid to Fanaily Instruction. By Henry J. Ripley, Newton Theol. 
Institution. Seventh Edition. Price $1.25. 

*** This work should be in the hands of every student of the Bible, especially erery 
Sabbath School and Bible Class teacher. It is prepared •with special reference to tliis clasa 
of persons, and contains a mass of just the kind of information wanted. 

•'The undersigned, having examined Professor Ripley's Notes on the Gospels, can 
recommend them with confidence to all who need such helps in the study of the sacred 
Scriptures. Those passages which all can understand are left ' without note or comment,' 
and the principal labor is devoted to the explanation of such parts as need to be explained 
and rescued from the perversions of errorists, both the ignorant and tlie learned. Tlie 
practical suggestions at the close of each chapter, are not the least valuable portion of tJie 
work. Most cordially, for the sake of truth and righteousness, do we wish for these Notes 
a wide circulation. 

Baeon Stow, K. H. Neale, R. Turnbull, 

Daniel Shakp, J. W. Pauker, N. Colvek. 
Wm. Hague, R. W. Cushmajt, 

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, WITH NOTES. Chiefly Ex- 
planatory. Designed for Teachers in Sabbath Schools and Bible Classes, 
and as an Aid to Family Instruction. By Prof. Henky J. Ripley. 
Price 75 cents. 

"The external appearance of this book, — the binding and the printed page, — 'it is 
a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold.' On examining the contents, we are favorably 
impressed, first, by the wonderful perspicuity, simplicity, and compreliensivencss of the 
author's style; secondly, by the completeness and systematic anangemcnt of the work, in 
all its parts, the ' remarks ' on each paragraph being carefully separated from tlie exposi- 
tion ; thirdly, by the correct tlieology, solid instruction, and consistent explanations of 
difficult passages. The work cannot fail to be received with favor. These Notes are much 
more full than the Notes on tlie Gospels, by the same author. A beautiful map accompanies 
them." — Christian Reflector, Boston. 

ORUDEN'S CONDENSED CONCORDANCE. A Complete Con- 
cordance to the Holy Scriptures ; by Alexander Cruden, l^I.A. A 
New and Condensed Edition, with an Introduction ; bv Rev. David 
King, LL.D. Fifth Thousand. Price in Boards, 31.25 ; Sheep, $1.50. 

*»*"Thi3 edition is printed from English plates, and is a full and fair copy of all 
that is valuable in Cruden as a Concordance. The principal variation from the larger book 
consists in the exclusion of the Bible Dictionarj', which has long been an incumbrance, 
and the accuracy and value of which have been depreciated by works of later date, contain- 
ing recent discoveries, facts, and opinions, unknown to Cruden. The condensation of 
the quotations of Scripture, arranged under their most obvious heads, while it diminishes 
the bulk of tlie work, greatly facilitates the finding of any required passage. 

" Those who have been acquainted with the various works of this kind now in use, 
well know that Cruden's Concordance far excels all others. Yet we have in this edition of 
Cniden, the best m^de better. That is, the present is better adapted to the purposes of a 
Concordance, by the erasure of superfluous references, the omission of unnecessary expla- 
nations, and the contraction of quotations, &c. ; it is better as a manual, and is better 
adapted by its price to the means of many who need and ought to possess such a work, 
than the former larger and expensive edition." — Boston Recorder. 

" The new, condensed, and cheap work prepared from the voluminous and costly one of 
Cruden, opportunely fills a chasm in our Biblical literature. The work has been examined 
critically by several ministers, and others, and pronounced complete and accurate." 

Bajitist Record, Phtla, 

" This is the very work of which we have long felt the need. We obtained a copy of 
the English edition some months since, and wished some one would publish it ; and we 
are much pleased that its enterprising publishers can now furnish the student of the Bible 
with a work which he so much needs at so cheap a rate." —Advent Herald, Boston. 

" We cannot see bat it is, in all points, as valuable a book of reference, for ministers and 
Bible students, as the larger edition." — Christian Reflector, Boston. 

'' The present edition, in being relieved of some things which contributed to render all 
former ones unnecessarily cumbrous, without adding to the substantial value of the work, 
becomes an exceedingly cheap book." — Albany Aryiis.. 



GOULD, KEXDALL AKD LI^^COLK'S PUBLICATIONS. 



^gmn BooR^- 



THE psalmist: a New Collection of Hymns, for the use of the 
Baptist Churches. By Bakon Stow and S. F. Ssiith. 

Assisted by W. R. Williams, Geo. B. Ide, R. W. Griswold, S. P. Hill, 
J. B. Taylor, J. L. Dagg, W. T. Brantly, R. B. C. HoweU, Samuel W. 
Lynd and John M. Peck. 

Pulpit edition, 12 mo., sheep. Price 1.25. Pew edition, 18mo., 75 cts. 
Pocket edition, 32mo., 56>^ cts. — All the dififerent sizes supplied in 
extra styles of binding at corresponding prices. 

*,♦ This work it may be said, has become the book of the Baptist denomination, haying 
been introduced extensively into every State in the Union, and the British provincea. Am 
a collection of hymns it stands unrivalled. 

The united testimony of pastors of the Baptist churches in Boston and vicinity, In New 
York, and in Philadelphia, of the most decided and flattering character, has been given ia 
favor of the book. Also, by the Professors in Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, 
and the Newton Theological Institution. The same, also, has been done by a great number 
of clergymen, churches, Associations, and Conventions, in every State of the Union. 

THE PSALMIST, WITH A SUPPLEMENT, by Richard Fuller, 

of Baltimore, and J. B. Jeter, of Richmond. (Prices same as above.) 

*^*This work contains nearly thirteen hundred hymns, original and selected, by 178 
writers, besides pieces credited to fifty-five collections of hymns or other works, the author- 
ship of which is unknown. Forty-five are anonymous, being traced neither to authors nor 
collections. 

The Suprr-EiiENT, occupying the place of the Chants, which in many sectiona of the 
country are seldom used, was undertaken by Rev, Messrs. Fuller and Jeter, at the aolicita- 
tion of friends at the South. 

" The Psalmist contains a copious supply of excellent hymns for the pulpit We are 
acquainted with no collection of hymns combining, in an equal degree, poetic merit, evangeli- 
cal sentiment, and a rich variety of subjects, with a happy adaptation to pulpit services. 
Old songs, like old friends, are more valuable than new ones. A number of the hymns best 
known, most valued, and most frequently sung in the South, are not found in the Psalmist. 
"Without them, no hymn book, whatever may be its excellences, is likely to become gener- 
ally or permanently popular in that region." — Freface, 

COMPANION FOR THE PSALMIST. Containing Original Mu«ic. 
Arranged for hymns in ' The Psalmist,' of pecuhar character and metre. 
By N. D. Gould. Price 12>^ cents. 

THE SOCIAL PSALMIST. A New Selection of Hymns for Con- 
ference Meetings and Family Worship. By Baron Stow and S. F. 
Smith. 

" This selection has been in preparation nearly five years, during which time it has been subjected 
to repeated examinalion and carelul revision. The object in its preparation has been to furnish a. 
selection of choice hymns tor the vestry and the family circle, of moderate size, and at trifling expense, 
exactly suited to the various stages and conditions of the conference, and other devotional meetings 
usunlly held in the conference roum, as well as in family worship." 

It is printed on good paper, and strongly bound in sheep, and is afforded at the very low price of 
525 cents per copy, and $2 50 per dozen. I 

THE CHRISTIAN MELODIST. A Collection of Hymns for So- 
cial and Religious Worship. By Rev. J. Banvard. 1 

The work contains 600 hymns, and each hymn has the name of an appropriate tune prefixed. Tha 
notes of these tunes, cccupvinj more than sixty pages, are inserted at the end ot the volume. 

There is a copious variety of hymns, adapted to all the regular and the occasional meeungs of the 
church, printed in large, open type, so as to be easily read. Price 37 1-2 cents. $4 00 per dozen. 

WINCHELL'S WATTS. WATTS AND RIPPON. 



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THE WOEKS OF JENKYN — CHURCH— KEMPIS. 



THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT, in its relation to God 
and the Universe. By Thomas W. Jea^kyn, D.D. 12ino. 
cloth. Price 85 cents. 

"We have examined this work with profound interest and become deeply 
impressed with its value. Its style is lucid, its analysis perfect, its spirit and 
tendencies eminently evangelical. We have nowhere else seen the atone- 
ment 80 clearly defined, or vindicated on grounds so appreciable." 

ifew York Recorder. 

" As a treatise on the grand relation of the Atonement, it is a book which 
may be emphatically said to contain the ' seeds of things,' the elements of 
mightier and nobler contributions of thought respectingthe sacrifice of Christ, 
than any modern production. It is characterized by highly original and 
dense trains of thought, which make the reader feel that he is holding com- 
munion with a mind that can ' mingle with the universe.' We consider this 
volume as setting the long and fiercely agitated question, as to the extent of 
the Atonement, completely at rest. Posterity will thank the author till the 
latest ages, for his illustrious arguments." — iVew York Evangelist. 

THE UNION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH. 

in the Conversion of the World. By Thomas W. Jenkyn, 
D.D. 12nio., cloth. Price 85 cents. 

" The discussion is eminently scriptural, placing its grand theme, the union 
of the Holy Spirit and the Church in the conversion of the world, in a very 
clear and afiFccting light." — Christian Watchman. 

" A very excellent work upon a very important subject. The author seemfl 
to have studied it in all its bearings, as presented to his contemplation in the 
sacred volume." — London Evangelical Magazine. 

" Fine talent, sound learning, and scriptural piety pervade every page. It is 
impossible that it can be read witliout producing great etfects. Mr. Jenkyn 
deserves the thanks of the whole body of Christians for a book which will 
greatly benefit the world and the church." — London Evangelist, 

ANTIOCH ; Or, Increase of Moral Power in the Church of 
Christ. By Rev. P. Church. With an Introductory Essay, 
by Baron 'Stow, D.D. 18mo., cloth. Price 50 cents. 

"It is a book of close and consecutive thought, and treats of subjects which 
are of the deepest interest, at the present time, to the churches of this country. 
The autlior is favorably known to the religious public, as an original thinker, 
and a forcible writer." — Christian Reflector. 

"By some this book will be condemned, by many it will be read with 
pleasure, because it analyzes and renders tangible, principles that have been 
vaguely conceived in many minds, reluctantly promulgated, and hesitatingly 
believed. We advise our brethren to read the book, and judge for them- 
selves." — Baptist Record. 

* It is the work of an original thinker, on a subject of great practical interest 
to the church. It is replete with suggestions, which, in our view, are emi- 
nently worthy of consideration." —P/tt to. Christian Observer. 

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By Thomas a Kempis. 
With an Introductory Essay, by T. Chalmers, D.D. A new 
and improved edition. Edited by H. Malcom, D.D. 18mo., 
cloth. Price 38 cents. 

THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST. By Ernest 
Sartorius, D. D. Translated from the German, by R-ev. 
O. S. Stearns, A. M. Cloth. 42 cents. 

" A work of much ability, and presenting the argument in a style that 
will be new to most American readers, it will deservedly attract atten- 
tion." — JV. Y. Observer. 



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DAILY MANNA for Christian Pilgrims. By Rev. B. Stow, D.D 

THE ATTRACTIONS OF HEAVEN. Edited by the Rev 
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the writings of J. A. James. 

LYRIC GEMS. A Collection of Original and Select Sacred 
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THE CYPRESS WREATH. A Book of Consolation for those 
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THE MOURNER'S CHAPLET. An Ofl^ering of Sympathy for 
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THE FAMILY CIRCLE. Its Affections and Pleasures. Edited 
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Sets of the above, in neat boxes, and forming a heautiful ^^Minia- 
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THE SILENT COMFORTER. A Companion for the Sick Room. 
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